Techno Babble Weblogs

This blog has moved on ...

2006-07-15T09:21:00.000+10:00

Just a quick note to let you all know that I decided to consolidate all of my blogs into one place, and thus have moved them all to : http://xntrek.wordpress.com/

Anti-Spam, BlueSecurity and the Kickback

2006-05-02T10:22:00.000+10:00

[Update - 09.05.2006]

Well since I posted the entry below, a lot has happened!

The spammers, realising that their FUD attempt failed on most BlueSecurity users, ramped up the attempt. Oh, and how! If the following doesn't demonstrate the fear that these groups are feeling, I'm not sure what does!

Quoted from the CastleCops forums:

"""""""""""""""
A small group of spammers have mounted a concerted attack on Blue Security. Over 5 days from May 1, they have

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 4

Stage 5

fourth wave

Stage 6 May 6 sent a fifth wave of email again with Subject line: "http://www.bluesecurity.com". Content was an extortion threat, and reference to an attached zip file which did not make it. Forged signature: Blue Security Inc. The forged From: and Reply-to: addresses were taken from the blue security list, as were the To: addresses, so that members would receive both the spam, and some delivery failure messages as well.

Stage 7 May 7 sent a sixth wave of email containing an attack on Blue Security's CEO Eran Reshef. Subject: ""Simulated DDoS Network Attacks and Network Intrusions". Mail refers to Skybox Security Solutions which developed an offering for for that purpose. It quotes "Eran co-founded Skybox Security and served as its Chairman. Prior to Skybox Eran founded and managed Sanctum (acquired by WatchFire), the leader in web application security. Eran holds a variety of security-related patents that are based on his inventions. " The obvious implication is that the beta tested Blue Security should not have been vulnerable to a DDOS attack itself. This spam is a smear campaign directed at Eran Reshef himself.

Projection Another attack expected from this group, is another Joe Job (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job ) campaign similar to stage 3. It will consist of a spamming run to a large number of people, where the "From" address will be forged using addresses of the Blue Security membership. The effect will be a series of bounce-backs coming to Blue Security members, and complaints from recipients of the spam.

"""""""""""""""

BlueSecurity have posted up a "Timeline of PharmaMaster Attacks on www.bluesecurity.com" account found on their announcement pages.

Slashdot has also run a "What Happened to Blue Security" article - with a phenomenal overwhelmingly positive response to Blue Security, and what is most impressive is the number of supportive postings from non-members and soon-to-become members alike.

For all the latest and more check out the BlueSecurity Forums.

------------------------------------------------------------
[Original Posting]
------------------------------------------------------------
Greetings and Salutations,

Recently, I started playing around with the FireFox web browser. One of the nice features that this browser sports is "Extensions". These are available for pretty much anything - Search Engine enhancements, Mail Checking, Spell Checking, RSS readers, Anonymous proxies ... well, you get the idea.

About a month or so ago, I downloaded an Extension that intrigued me "Blue Frog SRT". The reason is simple - from their own web page :

Spam Reporting Tool for Firefox and Internet Explorer users

The Blue Frog "Spam Reporting Tool" enables Firefox and Internet Explorer users with Gmail, Hotmail & Yahoo web mail accounts to actively fight spam reaching their web mail accounts and make spammers stop sending them additional spam.

When entering your web mail account, Blue Frog will automatically report all the spam messages in your junk folder to Blue Security. Blue Frog also allows you to easily report spam messages reaching your Inbox - messages that were not identified as spam by your web mail application.

Messages you report will be analyzed by our Operations team that will prepare special scripts instructing Blue Frog how to complain at the web sites advertised by spam. Your Blue Frog desktop application will automatically retrieve those scripts and post opt-out complaints on spammers sites.

So, I joined up, and bang, off I go - automatic spam fighting ...

Then yesterday I get this eMail in one of my "protected" accounts:

You are being emailed because you are a user of BlueSecurity's well-known software "BlueFrog." http://www.bluesecurity.com/

Today, the BlueSecurity database became known to the worst spammers worldwide. Within 48 hours, the database will be published on the Internet, and your email address will be open to them all. After this, you will see the spam sent to your mailbox increase 10 - 20 fold.

BlueSecurity was illegally attacking email marketers, and doing so with your help. Many websites have been targeted and hit, including non-spam sites. BlueSecurity's software has been fully analyzed, and contains an abundance of malicious code. This includes: ability to send mass mail to users; the ability to attack websites with Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS); the ability to open hidden doors on any machine on which it is running; and a hidden auto-update code function, which can install anything on your computer and open it up to anyone.

BlueSecurity lists a USA address as their place of business, whereas their main office is in Tel Aviv. BlueSecurity is run by a few Russian-born Jews, who have previously been spamming themselves. When all is said and done, they will be able to run, hide and change their identities, leaving you to take the fall. YOU CANNOT PARTICIPATE IN ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES and expect to get away with it. This email ensures that you are well aware of the situation. Soon, you will be found guilty of computer crimes such as DDOS attacking of websites, conspiracy, and sending mass unsolicited bulk email messages for everything from viagra to porn, as long as you continue to run BlueFrog.

They do not take money for downloading their software, they do not take money for removing emails from their lists, and they have no visible revenue stream. What they DO have is 500,000 computers sitting there awaiting their next command. What are they doing now?

1. Using your computer to send spam ?
2. Using your computer to attack competitor websites?
3. Phishing through your files for your identity and banking information?

If you think you can merely change your email address and be safe while still running BlueFrog, you are in for a big surprise. This is just the beginning...

Naturally, I forwarded this to BlueSecurity Support with a "please explain" - their response:

Earlier this morning, one major spammer (apparently in great distress) has just started spamming our members with discouraging messages in an attempt to demoralize our community. This spammer is using mailing lists he already owns that contain your email address. The email you had received is part of a spam campaign containing millions of such messages.

As you may already know, many spammers had already listened to the voice of reason and chose comply with the Registry (see our recent blog posts at http://community.bluesecurity.com for more details). This spammer chose a different type of response - but in vain.

Our answer to those criminals should be one - we will not be discouraged; We will continue to exercise our right to opt-out of spam.

Make spammers hear you load and clear - report your spam and let Blue Frog fight spammers on your behalf.

Keep on the good work and let spammers know - we will prevail!

We're sorry for the inconvenience and would would be happy to assist in answering any further questions you may have.

Thank you again for your support.

So, not to be Cynical, but I thought I'd check to see What SANS.org had to say about this organisation. From their last Newsletter I found this entry:

Company Will Pay Hefty Fine for Violating Anti-Spam Law (24 March 2006)
Internet marketing company Jumpstart has agreed to pay a US$900,000 fine "to settle charges it violated federal anti-spam laws." Jumpstart allegedly sent out spam offering free movie tickets in exchange for five friends' email addresses. The company allegedly sent unsolicited email messages to the addresses it gathered with misleading subject lines and headers in an attempt to evade spam filters and to make the messages appear to come from friends. In its complaint, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accused Jumpstart of sending email with falsified or misleading subject lines, not identifying it as commercial email and not clearly informing recipients of ways to opt out of receiving more email.
- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11996880/

[Editor's Note (Grefer): The fact that Jumpstart was willing and able to settle with the FTC to the tune of US$900,000 provides an inkling of the profits still involved in sending out spam. Please help to fight back and give the offenders a taste of what they're dishing out. Subscribe to the Do Not Intrude Registry and letBlueSecurity's Blue Frog utilize its Active Deterrence.
- http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/bluesecurity/
- http://www.bluesecurity.com/

So, maybe I'm being ignorant, but I tend to think that if SANS is willing to support this group, then so am I.

The other thing to consider, of the eMail addresses registered in my Blue account, only two are being attacked this way - so, if the DB was compromised - why aren't the other accounts being targetted??

So, this post is to let you all know that BlueFrog is worthwhile. Check it out. Install it! If you're not a windows user - then campaign them to make it available for your platform!

If you're a spammer - pffft!

TTFN!

Something for the mentees: snippets of advice

2006-03-04T01:48:00.000+11:00

Greetings and Salutations,

Today, I was looking through some correspondence with previous mentees, saw a recurring pattern of questions and thought (removing any identifying information) that it may be useful to some others in similar situations ... so I thought I'd share.

The only unfortunate thing in doing this, is that in generalising and de-personalising the streams of information, some of it may lose it's value or impact ... but them the breaks. So without further ado, here we go.

--------------------------------------

How familiar is this scenario to you? How many of these questions have you asked?

"I've inherited a bunch of hand-built systems with no documentation, (other than passwords)"
"There aren't any standardised services"
"I'd like to standardise the server platforms and OS revisions"
"I'd like to be able to automate patch/release management"
"I need a system where I can rebuild each server from scratch (there's no money for clusters or warm-standby systems)"
"I've inherited systems that were put together with a few too many short-cuts and I have to somehow convince management to spend some money - or learn how to make things work another way."
"I need to be able to manage vendor maintenance contracts on the hardware, software and applications"
"There's no [standardised] system documentation for each server"
"How do I implement change management policies?"
"I need to maintain patch management and upgrade paths - the previous admins had a 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' attitude which means we now have systems that are on an unsupported or end-of-life version"
"I need to figure out how to manage my manager"

These are the sorts of questions that seem to make up a pattern between the mentees I've taken on in the past. I may not have all the answers - let's be honest, if I did, I'd probably be a full-time consultant charging first-born rates to give you your golden ticket, but hopefully some of the distilled responses below may help.

--------------------------------------

Managing Up/Getting buy-in

Okay, so do you know what the first rule of managing up, internal selling, gaining stakeholders, etc is? It's a little known Radio station - WII-FM. Funny thing is, most people claim they haven't heard about this radio station ... yet it has a 100% market saturation rate. It stands for " What's In It For Me?" and everyone listens to it! Like it or not, the majority of people you are going to deal with in your daily working life are not there for the betterment of (wo)mankind, for the longevity of the company nor even for the best/purest/correct technological solution.

Surprise, surprise, they are in it for themselves - for their key performance indicators, or whatever the performance management system in place requires they achieve to get their next pay rise, or the corner in the office or the status among their peers. The sooner we accept this, without judgement (in the workplace at least) the better off we'll be in the long and arduous journey that will make up our quest for getting "things" done. So, now that we know that's the secret ... the trick is to tune into their personal broadcast. What's driving your manager? Just as importantly, what's driving each manager in the chain up to the CIO and CEO of the firm? {See Exercise Opportunity: 1 at the end of this entry} So, that's all well and good you say, but it still doesn't help your current issues, right? Unfortunately, there isn't a quick answer unless your boss is also technically inclined ... In the meantime, the task list here is going to mean some additional work and research. When it comes to arguing these things back up, it's not enough to argue the merits of best practice, technical requirements or how many hours there are in a day. This is the unfortunate reality - you can only argue the 'value proposition' of any item you present to management.

--------------------------------------

Vendor maintenance contracts on the hardware, software and applications.
I have many mentees inform me that they dont have any form of mainenance contracts with their vendors. Generally, this is due to a "that's why we have hired you" attitude.

Personally, I always think these are necessities as opposed to nice to haves in any workplace. However, the commercial realities may not always make this a viable option. So, how do you sell this? Three words: Worst Case Scenario (WCS).

Below is an easy argument for a hardware contract - but the same scenario can be utilised for software or application contracts. e.g. Big Server 1 holds the entire customer database. The I/O controller dies, thus causing a corruption to data as the hardware fails. Unfortunatly, the server being over 3 years old, means that getting a replacement could take up to 3 business days. Add to that an additional half-day to rebuild the OS and the 10 hour data restore. This all leads to anywhere from an approximate 24 to 96 hour potential downtime (which has a collaterl damage bill of?). This can be offset with a maintenance contract that would supply us with the spare part and assist with the rebuild - which means a worst case of only 24 hours if we go cheap.

--------------------------------------

A trusted system on the internal LAN from which acts as a repository for system files and server images
I would use the same argument here for the reduction in the WCS timings. To be honest, this could be difficult ... but I'd present it merged with a Patch management and change management as a combination system. This means you can flesh it out with the reduction in costs related to the manual rebuild, bug fixes, patching and controlled maintenance windows for each system.

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Standardised system documentation for each server
Getting this right is so important.

Documentation is the kryptonite of all system administrators. Having a standardised template makes this process less painful - and we all know that having full doco on each system is important. We can talk about doco at length ... suffice to say though, this is one of those tasks that you either need to get the buy-in of your team mates to make work - or do it all yourself and then have others utilise it as a matter of fact part of their duties.

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Change management policies
The good news is that you don't need a financial backer to implement this initiative.

The bad news is that cultural change can be so much harder.

Is this a nice to have? Hell no! This is an urgent requirement! I can't conceive how any IT department with more than a handful of servers can be run without a change management policy. I don't want to be too evangelical about it so I'll stop my rant about now... The ideal will be to map out a number of requirements - not just the technical details but also the business impacts and regulatory requirements. This should be integrated with a dependency matrix {Exercise Opportunity: 3}, maintenance windows based on business impact, a stakeholders list ( i.e. business unit managers or system owners) as well as a records management system style of recording the change, the testing prior to implementation, the backout strategy, etc ... I'd suggest building the change management system and putting it in place for all direct infrastructure ( e.g. mail server, file server, etc) systems. This allows you to fine tune it a little and demonstrate the business value of it's implementation to management - and thus their buy-in for implementation across the corporation.

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A server and an application licence, to allow us to run a production and staging on two different boxes
Oh, one of the hardest things to fight for in any corp! Ideally, the process for any IT implementation should be three stages - development -> testing/staging -> production. Some of the larger corps (like banks and national telco's) split the testing and pre-production-staging areas into separate stages. Again, the argument here is the WCS - loss or corruption of data, followed by data restoration windows - but having a loss of sales at this same time, etc, etc, etc ... Ideally, you would sell this as part of a greater change management system. But, in the meantime - look at utilising virtualisation to accomplish as much as you can without having every server physically duplicated.

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Exercise Opportunities:
--
1. The Driving Force: What's behind the Management team all the way up to CEO? As you talk to each person up the chain, ascertain what's important to them, from both a professional ( i.e. what they see as their role) and personal (what is actually their hidden/not-so-hidden motivation?) and you will need to do repeat this task for each role each time a new person fills it. Start collating this information into grids - what are the common factors trickling down the line? Is there a specific common theme that can be utilised from a business case justification point of view? What common theme is running down the line from a personal motivation? These will become important at a later stage when you're ready to begin pro-active up-selling.

--
2. An Historical View: If you know where you've been, it's easier to work out where you're heading. What's the history of your team? department? workplace? Collating as much information as possible - not just the surface reasons can improve your understanding of what has happened, and what to expect. For example:

what were the team expectations, and did they meet them?
What were the SLA's for the team?
Are those same SLA's still in place?
What were the ratios of admins to services?
Has the number of system's increased since?
What are the business impacts that have come about since these changes? i.e. how many requirements are on the waiting list?
How many servers are running above capacity?
How many down times have occurred and what is the impact to the business in real terms or in 'collateral damage' amounts?

--
3. Creating a dependency matrix. This is not as simple an exercise as it sounds. Start by documenting out each of the physical systems across the company under one column. In the next column, add the services and applications running under each system against that physical system. Once each system is documented vertically, repeat the listing horizontally. In the ensuring grid, start colour-coding the dependency relationship within each grid square. e.g. full dependency = red square, application dependency = yellow square, data dependency = blue square, regulatory dependency = black square, etc. Of course, if you're more coder-focused, you can turn this into a pivot table with custom scripting or dump it into a DB with the appropriate DBA magic.

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What I mean by "Collateral Damage": One of the factors I used to utilise in the fight to justify costs of 'doing it right' to the business. The idea is to put a dollar value on all factors related to downtime - lost productivity, lost sales/revenue, customer dissatisfaction, etc. It's important to be able to vocalise this figure as a direct side-effect of downtime or slow systems or 'whatever' as it is easier to justify costs for what 'business types' will see simply as an 'insurance policy' when you can show them the 'damage bill' and provide the value of the proposition as a percentile factor. Gathering the data for this is generally easy as there is always someone in the company who has already worked out figures for their area (especially in insurance/finance corps - where someone has actually put a dollar value on each lost call, etc) ... this is where you start putting your people skills to work and talk to key members in each department and in a very short time you can have this information ... and usually the entire level of current gossip and political play as well.

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I know this is sparse ... but it may assist one or two of you ... hope it does.

TTFN!

Forget the technology - Where's the solution?

2006-01-19T12:20:00.000+11:00

Greetings and Salutations,

There's a great story from my journeys that symbolises the base theme of my topic today.

Out at a manufacturing plant, there was a problem that required resolution. It seemed that a particular line that inserted the light globes into the carton sleeves would occasionally insert an additional sleeve onto the line empty. The problem was that the timing was fine, and the rest of the production was perfect ... Until the packed boxes reached the retailers who would have to ask for refunds for the 8-13% of empty tubes that made it out.

So, management requested a solution from the engineers. "Help us solve the issue and save us the $300,000 year this issue is costing us."

So, the engineers went away, they looked at the problem from a hundred different angles and researched the latest and greatest razors edge technologies and came up with an AI interfaced x-ray scanner and robotic arm that would identify the empty tubes and remove them from the line.

They presented their solution to the board, along with a production implementation cost proposal of $420,000.

Besides the usual factors of high upfront capitol budget, extended ROI and downtime for installation, the major factor for rejecting the solution was due to being outbid on the solution by a factory floor worker.

The innovative line worker installed a small fan on the side of the belt that blew the empty tubes onto the floor - total cost of $12 up front capital for the fan and running operational costs of approximately $30-40 a year in electricity.

We sometimes get lost in the technology rather than the solution.

This is often the case in arguing a case for any form of work we aim at the corporate decision makers. We focus on the tighter integration, faster processing, integrated usability ... but we never answer the key issues of the problem.

Sometimes the best solution is not IT. Heresy? Perhaps.

We need to take a step backwards and re-think the problem, the endpoint requested solution and then match a technology to fit this scenario - if required.

There have been a plethora of projects that I have worked on that would have been better served by a structural re-organisation, business process re-engineering or even a re-evaluation of the core business requirement.

On the flip side of the coin, when a technology project is the way forward, then regardless of the current technology sets already in-house, your process should include a full evaluation of the products available on the market that match the endpoint solution criteria.

Sometimes you'll find that a product that is not part of your "standards" will do the job perfectly - other times, you can put pressure on your current vendor to provide the missing functionality that other packages offer, you might even find that your standard vendor offerings are the best options after all. Your due diligence requires that you explore every option and perform a full comparison evaluation ... further evaluation upon conducting a cost/benefit analysis on each of the options will assist you in finalising the business case and the final proposal.

However, the final straw should always be on the solution - you can justify anything to the board (and the accountants) if you can line up the solution with each of the spoken (and just as important, the unspoken and/or implied) requirements, show the business value (i.e. not the processes per second but the % per year operational saving) and the all important ROI.

Just some food for thought ...

TTFN!

Innovation, Creativity, IT and Architecture

2005-12-18T18:56:00.000+11:00

Greetings and Salutations,

As Enterprise Architects, we can easily get caught in the trap of having tunnel vision. We perceive that our roles are that of technology strategists, of aligning business vision with IT enablement, of providing a governing role in the direction of IT within the business confines.

Many of us are quite happy to leave the running, maintenance and direction of the operation and line of service staff to the CIO and the respective IT management. However, I have come to the conclusion that if we are to be truly successful in our roles, nay our vision and the very delivery of the end point, then we too should be seeking out other aspects that affect us.

In short, just as we provide the service to the business of enabling business vision via IT through the process of Enterprise Architecture and technology direction modelling, so too should we consider and architect with equal fervour the enabler of the IT solutions – the very department and it’s people.

For a number of years, and in a number of organisations, I have had a constant battle with the oft conflicting requirements of providing value in my role, maintaining the core business activity, delivering IT, providing innovation and creating future value to the business.

Perhaps it’s purely my own focus that creates this scenario – god knows that I’ve oft been told to “let go”, “don’t take so much on”, “why are you even thinking about that” and of course, “that’s not your responsibility”. However, the fact remains that I am constantly on the look out to achieve each of these goals, and, even now, have unsuccessfully contrived the methodologies or toolsets required to simultaneously bring these all into a balanced, collaborative solution – i.e. a working formula.

In the last year, I’ve been researching other organisations, attending a plethora of conferences, speaking to peers and even resorting to materials taught to MBA graduates in the feint hope of solidifying a structure, process or even a blueprint to achieve these goals. Following are my current views – admittedly, as with all things in life, experience will change my (idealistic?) perceptions in the future, but as always, I prefer to write them out, share and invite open debate even if it is still a little airy.

Cleaning up the shop

First and foremost, the hardest job that needs to be completed prior to anything else being commenced is the age-old “getting your house in order”.

Now, this poses a variety of challenges that differ from company to company, but in general there are many common themes that run from the small business to enterprise wide IT department. These include the standard steadfast requirements of governance, change control and process management. However the oft overlooked, ignored or simply forgotten aspects are also important – the removal of blame culture and the process of implementation reviews so as to foster ideas and the ability to learn from mistakes, the ability to align key performance indicators with the combined visions of the business and the architectural plan, the implementation of feedback sessions with each group to understand staff perceptions and cultural environs … the list goes on. I will not delve into all of these areas here, but if enough interest is garnered, I will endeavour to write further on thsse arenas not covered in this article in future postings.

Foster feedback

I often see among my peers that they have been so far removed from the world of support and implementation that they were in so many years ago that they have forgotten the range of issues, perceptions and emotions they themselves invariably experienced. How many of us can claim that at the time we didn’t perceive that management had a clue, or that they were no longer in touch with what was happening “on the front line”?

If you are anything like me, you’ll read your customer reviews, management perceptions and vendor reports with a healthy sense of scepticism. Why? As important as these reports are to you completing your duties, they only provide you with one side of the information.

The staff who support the environment, those in daily communication with the end users will have an often contrasting view of the world to those presented by the formal reports. Does this make one or the other more correct? Of course not! However, it does provide you with a 360 degree view and thus arm you with the ability to better design and implement your solution.

Feedback can be received in many fashions – through a formal request, a feedback response system or scheduled group open forums – the important aspect here is to foster the feedback, listen to it and make the staff aware that it is welcomed and appreciated.

Foster an environment of creativity and innovation

Way too often I have seen the ideas of a help desk or other support staff squashed because someone further up the chain perceives them to “not understand” the bigger picture.

Often these ideas are squashed at the lower levels because someone perceived that “no one will listen anyway”. How many solutions, how many leapfrog advances have you missed because you are relying solely on your current circle of architects, managers and vendors?

The staff need to feel that they can be creative and have their ideas assessed as input into the technology directions of the company. Whether it’s a new way to deliver services, or simply a better way to package up an application, all of these ideas should be fostered and considered towards “the final solution”.

So, how do we encourage this? The previous topic is probably the most important step – if your staff do not feel that they can provide feedback and be heard, why would they waste their time providing you with creative ideas, innovations or process savers?

Once that first step is out of the way, the next is to actively foster a creative environment. Although each environment is different, and you have to take into account the varying factors (such as culture and team dynamics) the basics are pretty much the same. In essence (and at the risk of repeating myself once more) these are:

freedom that allows employees to determine what they will do and how they will do it (within you’re well defined vision and direction – aka your strategy)
open communication where ideas are exchanged freely between people
challenging work that interests and absorbs employees

Theoretically, culture flows down to the troops from the upper layers. If you foster these “creativity nurturing” aspects within your own team and it’s essence within your workshops, meetings and dealings with other business unit leaders, it may just permeate your organisation. Some items to help guide you:

Facilitating Freedom

Include your team in making decisions where feasible and practical
Let team members choose their own tasks and methodologies, within reason and standing policies

Facilitating Open Communication

Lay the foundations at the start - Let your team know they are supported, that it’s OK to ask question and that constructive ideas to improve systems and processes are welcomed and heeded.
Meet regularly, request ideas & open out the request for comments to members outside your immediate circle

Facilitating Challenging Work

Ask, “How else might this process (or product, system, design, etc) be utilised and/or leveraged?”

________________________

It seems apparent to me that managing creativity well is closely related to being a good manager. It’s about focusing people on the task at hand while encouraging them to maintain an open mind, seeking improvement, providing them with what they require and all while fostering an environment that allows them to be release their creative sides.

This is definitely a lot easier said than done.

However, I believe that there is always something that can be done – it may not be perfect, and it may have some minor backlashes, but, then, that’s what we’re there for – to try and improve the business through better use of systems – whether that’s technology, information, process or … people.

________________________

This may not be much, but it’s all I have for today. Hopefully, time will allow me to revisit this in the near future with further lessons learnt.

TTFN!

Systems Administrators - mindset requires reset!

2005-11-21T20:48:00.000+11:00

Greetings and Salutations,

A response to the USENIX/SAGE organisational split fiasco and the creation of LOPSA

Well, after a month of listening (well, reading to be exact) the approximately 237-odd entries on the US arm of the SAGE members lists, I finally realised that this is why as an organisation we haven't moved very far from the humble days of it's inception a tad on a decade ago.

I won't repeat the entire story here, but there's a reasonably accurate summary (if not a little cynical and jaded view) of the events on Ben Rockwood's blog. In short, my take is ... SAGE USENIX LOPSA BLURGH!

Unfortunately, this entire event is part of an endemic aspect of system administration thinking that you don't tend to recognize while you're still in the field - only when you become a team leader, or move into a "non-traditional" aspect of system administration (like architecture, planning, R&D, etc) where your thinking changes do you begin to perceive the mindset that makes up this horrendous scenario.

A decade ago, the organisation was small, the list was trickling but active, conferences were had, people tried to post up transcripts of the events, others took videos and digitised them for those that couldn't make it ... in short, it was a community, one borne of trying to help each other and to promote the ideal of System Administration.

Over the years, this mentality has changed, whether due to the rising fees, or the general world view of I pay, I want, or whether it was the fault of the board ... I don't know - nor any longer care. Not just on the US arm of SAGE either, SAGE-AU has suffered this "downturn" as well.

So what is it? What is the mentality that I am stating requires a reset?

It's a number of ones that come through:

The white coater mentality that is in short, a form of elitism - one that thinks we know all there is to know about IT, that the "noble profession of System Administration" is the pinnacle of IT roles
The gadgeteer mentality - the one that thinks if we're not using the latest and greatest then we're just not moving with the times
The researcher - who believes that advancements are only made through the studied application of papers and journal entries
The socialite - who feel that a community isn't worth joining unless there's a shindig once a year
The sponger - the ones who feel that placing their measly subscription fee should entitle them to an instant array of recognition, tools, papers and discounts
The politician - who feels that if everyone recognized their brilliance and handed over the reigns, the whole thing will run better ...

and the list goes on - but what oh what, dear reader, is missing? The community spirit!

How many are standing up and offering their time, ideas, guidance to further the cause?

If you're not doing it for the group, I dare say, you're not doing at your workplace or within your community.

This is the fundamental issue - as someone who hasn't been a "System Administrator" in the practical sense for nigh on four years now, I've still been active (as far as my lifestyle will allow) in the groups both in the US and Australian arms. Heck, I still take on up to four mentees a year!

I've heard (or read) many arguments over the last few years - for why SAGE(-AU) hasn't succeeded ... and while many have validity - it still comes down to the same basic point (which is rather simple) - the crew is standing around shouting out ideas to the Captain and expecting him (or her!) to do all the work!

With all of the ideas that are thrown up towards the board, how many are willing to put their own time and expertise in seeing the implementation (if accepted) through?

In this latest iteration of grumbling, the issue has been going for a year - people who were (or claimed to be) interested knew what was happening for a year - maybe not ALL of what was happening, but at least the overview. Now, you can't tell me that among all the members, not one had the skills to put together a business plan, put together a budget, assist with transitional logistics planning, marketing, etc? Yet, a few people voted for a transitional board and then left them holding the bag with the message "Good luck - give us a separate organisational body".

Just like every other time someone's raised an idea - which is why the mentoring group has been a resounding failure, why we don't have a industry renowned journal, why we simply don't command any industry respect - because no-one is willing to make an effort!

Generally speaking, a member of a board should only spend approximately 4-8 hours a month in their duties as a board member. I doubt any of the current board members spend less than that a week!

This mentality is the same one I see in the workforce. Everyone sits there and whines like a wounded dog in an alley about the state of affairs, the fact that there is no X or how Y would make it all better ... yet the majority wouldn't spend an extra 30 minutes a week to start implementing their ideas to prove their worth or even make their life easier 3 months from now.

I constantly hear excuses like "my job is administering the servers - I don't care what's running on them", usually followed quickly by things like, "those applications folks always wreck my system, I wish they'd get a clue".

Now, let's think this out for a second shall we?

If I knew what was running on my box - I could possibly ascertain potential issues that may come up before they do ...
If I implemented a change control system (which I also followed), I could keep track of the implementations by the "application folks" possibly diverting major issues and also PLANNING my time around those changes ... thus freeing me to do other things ...
If I documented the entire server life cycle (build, patches, installs, changes, etc) I can easily determine a baseline for when changes occur - and I have a guide for Disaster Recovery ... which I could get someone else to follow ...

It sounds a lot like common sense, doesn't it? So, why do so few Sys Admins do it? For the same reason they don't step into the community and give something back.

It's this mindset that needs a reset - and the new organisation of LOPSA will surely face the same success as SAGE if it's members do not step up to the mark and make a difference.

That's my rant on this topic, TTFN!

TEAC 05 : Visa EA Case Study

2005-08-12T21:49:00.000+10:00

They are one of the worlds largest processors of electronic payments with processing occurring in over 120 countries

They service over 21,000 financial institutions, 20 million merchant locations and provide over 1.3 billion Visa Cards

They process over 45 billion transactions annually

They have a peak authorisation processing of 5500 messages/sec (during last minute xmas eve shopping) with a round-trip average response time of 1.4 seconds.

They process over 30,000 business driven enhancements each year.

They have a data warehouse that has gone past a petabyte.

They maintain a six-nine (99.9999%) SLA with only 8 minutes of downtime globally in the last 5 years

Now, that is impressive in anyone’s language. It is no surprise then, that with these sort of drivers, that Enterprise Architecture is so important to Visa’s IT organisation (Innovant). This is especially true when you add the factors that constantly change the lay of the financial land such as Bank “mega-mergers”, privacy protection regulations (from every country), fraud protection, and an ever constant changing and emerging technologies and products. So, onto the presentation highlights.

Michael started with some history, interesting titbits and facts about Visa and Innovant (the most interesting of which I have paraphrased and summarised above) and then got straight into the Enterprise Architecture view.

Commencing with establishing the Enterprise Architecture Agenda, he implored us to remember the obvious – that the EA agenda reflects the enterprise needs.

So, we need to remember to focus on a number of guides:

Triage, prioritize, and deliver immediate value

Establish operations rather than consulting

Focus on communication & organizational adoption

Evangelize and vitalize!

Do a little “enterprise archaeology”

“The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out”
-- Dee Hock, Founder, Visa

The Architecture Framework utilised by Visa/Innovant is a 4*3 pyramidal structure (see image) that focuses on the business, information, systems and technical architectures with the focus of navigation, collaboration and communication.

So, what do the three foci mean?

Navigate. Traverse the entire spectrum of the Enterprise across all four architecture views to generate:

Technology Principles

Architecture Blueprints

Technology Standards

Design Patterns

Best Practices

Platform Guidelines

Systems Portfolio

Collaborate. Bring it all in the middle and work with the team members and stakeholders to produce:

Strategy / Alignment

Architecture Work Group

Architecture Previews

Architecture Reviews

Project Support

CTO Initiatives

Common Architectures

Communicate. This should be across the entire breadth of the Enterprise and a reiterative process. Not only should the obvious be performed (like communicating the vision, strategy, projects, etc) but also open the forums for feedback and innovation via information sessions like:

Architecture Forums

Emerging Technology

Vendor Roadmaps

It is no surprise to many that the Technology standards for Visa/Innovant includes the requirements for Broadening value, creating (and maintaining) an Enterprise taxonomy, providing high-value dialogue, ensuring management controls and improving operational processes.

Michael next beseeched us to think about the Architectural principles and metrics. Firstly, we should remember the purpose of publishing them – to provide enterprise and project guidance. However, we need to remember that the principles should be an “aspirational” vision for measuring progress and finally, that EA metrics should always be simple, show the value of EA and never be “finessed”. Lots of good advice really.

The last two points resonated with my own points of view as well. The first in relation to SOA. Michael rightly stated that the hype is out of control and that it’s time for you to take a good sniff test. After all, he stated, great architecture has always been services oriented, the challenge is not how to create an SOA but how to architect with a services orientation.

Finally, Michael entreated us to forget about the whole “it’s a journey rather than a destination” philosophy of EA. Have a destination – if you don’t know where you are going, how will you know if you are there yet? How will you know if you re succeeding? His slide spelled it out:

Some will perceive the shift …
Others will be bludgeoned by it …
More will need to be shown.

If you ever get a chance to hear Michael present, or the chance to discuss the topics one to one, I highly recommend it.

TTFN!

TEAC 05 : Suncorp BPM Case Study

2005-08-11T08:09:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

I recently attended The Enterprise Architecture Conference 2005 held by BTELL at Star Casino in Sydney. A lot of information was covered in a short amount of time (no surprise there!) and I decided that I would enter a retrospective set of entries for each of the sessions I attended. Where allowable by copyright, I will enter as much information as possible. Otherwise, I will just provide a brief description of my impressions of the session.

An IT Driven Approach to Process Architecture
Presented by Jamie Cornes, Team Leader Business Process Architecture, Suncorp.

Jamie presented a case study of Suncorp’s process automation and continuous improvement processes.

With no disrespect intended to Jamie, I found the presentation a little “light”. Now, whether that was due to NDA, compliancy or legal issues, I do not know … but I was hoping to hear more about the approaches used, the “gotchas”, lessons learnt, etc.

Instead, we got a brief overview of BPM theory and a presentation that seemed to be lifted from a boardroom proposal to sell IT driven BPM to Suncorp’s execs.

Perhaps I’m being too harsh, but that’s the way I saw it. I really got no value from this, and there’s nothing I can share here with you that you won’t see by doing a wikipedia search on the topic.

TTFN!

TEAC 05 : CML Case Study

2005-08-10T16:02:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

I recently attended The Enterprise Architecture Conference 2005 held by BTELL at Star Casino in Sydney. A lot of information was covered in a short amount of time (no surprise there!) and I decided that I would enter a retrospective set of entries for each of the sessions I attended. Where allowable by copyright, I will enter as much information as possible. Otherwise, I will just provide a brief description of my impressions of the session.

Architecture Modelling Tools for Business Transformation
Presented by Chris Tisseverarsinghe, Enterprise Architecture Manager for Coles Myer IT.

Chris presented a case study on the requirements of the business transformation drivers that created a need for Australia’s largest retailer to implement an Architecture Framework.

The complexities involved were high. CML has over 2000 stores across Australia and New Zealand, over a dozen major brands, over 180,000 staff and 400,000 shareholders. Additionally, there was no overarching CML IT Strategy, IT was owned and focused on individual brands and by its very nature, IT was fragmented, complex and costly.

The new CEO and CIO identified a need for Business & IT transformation and committed to achieving a common technology principle. This included the principles of:

Leveraging global best practice and CML scale
Simplifying
Automating
Single technology suite across processes
Move from a “build” to “buy” mentality
Follow a low execution risk
Provide rapid delivery
Provide lower TCO

The first port of call for CML was to move away from their original Architecture Modelling Environment (made up of and end-of-life modelling tool, MS access Forms UI and a basic DB repository) towards a new AME based on the Metis modelling tool, and a yet to be decided upon UI forms and new repository.

The decision to move to Metis (from Troux Technologies) was that it provides Visual modelling, multiple views, sophisticated analysis and has a rich, extensible meta-model. Chris explained that this allowed CML to create architectural models for business strategies, business architectures, application architectures and technology architectures while allowing them to model the evolution of the models over time and map them onto the work programs. The modelling environment is also being integrated with CML’s other IT governance and management tools.

Chris provided the following principle to apply to any architecture tools:

Start small where you can add value quickly
Extend models incrementally, on an as needed basis
Choose projects that will benefit directly from modelling in a tool
Ensure Information is accurate & current
Integrate modelling, model maintenance and usage into all core IT management processes
Involve architects “hands on” across the major transformation projects
Make models widely available for reference and usage
Apply standards to enable effective communication and re-use of models

Chris was very quick to highlight that the primary purpose of the tool is to aid and foster communication among the wider audience. His points are below:

Successful architects don’t stay in the “back-room” - they foster communication:

Across and between all levels of the business and IT
Among project teams, suppliers and service providers and operational teams

Utilising architecture tools to provide new opportunities for communicating using:

Navigable models
Views and styles targeted to specific needs and audiences
Visual and quantitative representations using standard modellingnotation, charts and tables
Immediate update and publication
Intranet publishing
Dynamic navigable documents and presentations

In his closing comments, Chris highlighted that Architecture Modelling Tools can provide real benefits to you and your organization by assisting with the management of large and/or complex projects; understanding the complex architectures; providing an accurate, easy and quick impact analysis; providing a consistent, accurate, easy and user friendly communication platform; providing speed and quality of design through re-use; the provision of speed and quality of development through an effective transfer of architectural intent; and finally, enabling a feedback loop across full development, implementation and operational lifecycles.

However, he did warn that Architecture modelling tools require discipline and commitment with buy-in and usage across the SDLC by key players being essential to ensure its success and value.

TTFN

TEAC 05 : Demystifying EA

2005-08-09T23:59:00.000+10:00

___________________________

Demystifying Enterprise Architecture to your Organization
Presented by Sam Holcman, President, Zachman Institute for Framework Advancement.

Sam presented an interesting discussion on defining and demonstrating what Enterprise Architecture is. Starting off by talking about the three ways to change a physical object being:

GO FOR IT
This being a common approach that many use – especially in the IT industry. We’ve all seen it, the System Administrator simply modifying the configuration or the programmer making a code change. This methodology presents itself as a High Risk venture, offers Low Reliability and is oft characterized by changes of Trial and Error.

THROW IT AWAY AND START OVER
Another common approach witnessed in our industry. Let’s not investigate whether the requirements only require a base change or minor configuration. Let’s not change the system, instead, Scrap the current system and claim that the useful life is exhausted.

REVERSE ENGINEER THEN CHANGE IT
The least common methodology witnessed, this requires us to find and (re)examine or even (re)create the drawings/plans, change the drawings to suit the requirements and then change the object in question.

The point that Sam made was valid. The three methodologies specified are also the same three methodologies utilized to change an enterprise.

So what is Enterprise Architecture? The phrase was defined by breaking down the term and defining each section:

Architecture: is the art and science of building, and the manner in which components and artefacts are organized.

Enterprise: a collection of “organizations”/”people” related things that has a common set of goals/principles and/or a single bottom line. Thus within this definition, a whole corporation, a division, an entire group or even a single department can be considered the enterprise.

Thus Enterprise Architecture is the art and science of building a series of artefacts that are understood by a number of people that describe the area under analysis. The full definition utilized by Sam in his presentation was:

Enterprise Architecture is about understanding the Enterprise through the different artefacts, and the interrelations between these artefacts, and communicating with numerous people, that make up the Enterprise.

Artefacts can be anything that is utilised for this purpose such as: strategies, business drivers, principles, stakeholders, units, locations, budgets, functions, processes, services, information, communications, applications, systems, infrastructure, etc.

Basically, artefacts are anything that define all the areas of:

What – Things/data
How – Process/Functions
Where – Locations/Networks
Who – People/Organisations
When – Events/Times
Why – Goals/Motivations

So, that’s all well and good, but how do we sell this concept to our organisation? As mentioned before, there are three methodologies that are generally utilised, but the only one that offers any true value is the third.

However, even the third methodology can fail due to the fact that it may not exhibit the essence of a sustainable architecture, such as:

Interoperability
Scalability
Portability
Recursiveness
Reusability

The value proposition for Enterprise Architecture lies in the following elements:

Alignment

The implemented enterprise reflects the intent of the “owners”

Integration

The data means the same thing to everyone
Messages are successfully (and consistently) transmitted from node to node
Everyone understands the objectives/strategies

Change Management (Flexibility)

Independent variables – Baselines for managing change

Retained (and accumulated) Enterprise knowledge
Information Systems Responsiveness
Architecture plus “assemble to order “processes”

In conclusion, the value proposition of the enterprise architecture framework lies in providing:

Cost reduction (via standardisation and reuse)
Agility (persistent and standardised models)
Speed (knowledge access)
Ability to manage Virtual (out-sourced) IT
Professionalism of staff
De-coupling of knowledge from individuals (cope with the volatility of staff)
Governance mechanism for critical assets
Context for architecture education and assessment
Adaptive mechanism to promote alignment between IT assets and business initiatives.

Sam provided a more in-depth analysis via his one day “Enterprise Architecture Planning” Seminar. If you ever get a chance to go to a Zachman presentation by Sam (or John Zachman himself) I highly recommend it.

TTFN.

TEAC 05 : Architecture Strategist

2005-08-08T23:07:00.000+10:00

__________________________________

The Enterprise Architecture Strategist
Presented by Jeff Scott, Principal Strategist Logical Leap (USA)

Jeff presented an interesting view of the EA process, with the focus being on defining the strategy correctly.

His argument rests on the premise that it's time for Enterprise Architects to rethink their approach to strategy and their role as technology strategists. Architects, he argued, need to acquire more strategy building skills, move strategy strategy development up their priority list, and engage IT and EA strategy development.

Apparently 80% of all EA projects fail. 40% fail outright, and 40% fail because they are ineffective. Only 20% succeed, and this success is attributed to a strong strategy.

Jeff proposed that there were three missing links:

Lack of clearly articulated Business strategies
Lack of clearly articulated IT strategies
Lack of clearly defined EA strategy framework or strategy development methodology

Additionally, he listed the following list as the top ten reasons architects fail to create a strategy:

Urgency of the moment
Underestimating the Value
Overestimating the difficulty
Lack of strategy building methodology
Political hurdles and conflicting agendas
No formal "strategy group"
Confusing planning with strategy building
General lack of strategic thinking
Technology focus
Five year plans

He presented on four types of strategy domains that require thought as part of this process:

Technology Strategist:
What technologies and industry best practices create IT efficiencies?
Performance Strategist:
What is the mix of technologies, usage patterns, etc that maximize IT's effectiveness?
Solutions Strategist:
What is the best way to deliver client solutions to maximise IT's current value?
Organisational Strategist:
How do we best align IT and Business strategy to maximise IT's future value?

Obviously, the point here is to provide a key to the success of the Enterprise Architecture project. Thus, Jeff proposed three methodologies to try and bridge the gap and create a strategic solution.

1. Inference

This methodology relies on answering the questions required to create a basic strategy on your own information. This is not as hard as you think. We, as technologists, already have a great understanding of the business. You'd be surprised how well you can answer some of these questions yourself. For example:

What is the companies desired geographic reach?
Will the customer base grow organically or via acquisition?
Is IT used primarily for cost reduction or Business Innovation?
Is the companies primary motivation price, product or service?
Is our business information or compute intensive?

The answers to these questions can then be added to the Architecture context (Scalable, Flexible, Adaptable, Industry Standard, Services Oriented, Performance based) to provide an inferred strategic plan.

The benefit of this model is that is can be achieved quickly, simply and self-reliantly. Of course the cons against this methodology is that you have no business validation, it's purely tactically focused and of course is self-contained and thus open to our own mis-inference of our data.

2. Short Form

In this methodology, we actually make an effort to collate data from the public domain to assist us with creating a strategic model. By reading the last three to five annual reports, talking to your corporate communications department, using the web to research your own company, meeting and interviewing key project managers, business liaisons and the CIO you can answer further questions. This data can then be compiled into a five to twenty page "Strategic Intent Document" which can then be merged with the Architectural context as the strategic direction.

Just like the Inference model, this also provides the benefit of being able to be completed quickly, simply and self-reliantly with the advantage of being conceptually linked to the business. Unfortunately, this method still lacks business validation and is still tactically focused.

3. "Just Do It"

In this methodology, we bite the bullet, make an effort to collate data and create the business strategy document ourselves.

This process requires that we go out and speak to the business in some detail, generally you will find that:

The business strategy is known, simply not articulated
Interviewing the business units and working up will show us a better picture
Each business unit will have it's own strategy, and some of these will seems to conflict

As part of this process, there are some thoughts that you must keep in mind:

Begin with the end in mind
Start with what you know
Solicit input & help from others
Group sessions work best
Stay focused on the business
Validate
Validate
Review
Validate

The beauty of this methodology is that it clarifies the business drivers, is future focused, creates strong business buy in and strengthens business relationships. However, it is a politically charged and labour intensive task, and is in danger of utilising poor methodologies.

__________________________________

Obviously, there are other methodologies you could utilise, but the main intent of Jeff's message is still clear: define a strategy for the direction of your architecture.

Remember, strategy is not the vision, nor the initiative, but a link between vision and direction.

I'd like to add that a well thought out and structured strategy should be able to provide a boundary for your staff, one that is not so rigid that all decisions are automatically fixed, however, neither is is it so loose as to be confusing or open to interpretation.

A good strategy should be clear, concise and communicable. The message should be clear and it will allow people to naturally align themselves to it. This will allow your staff to operate within the three-G's : Goals, Guidance, Guts.

The strategy will provide them with the short and long term goals of the enterprise, allowing them the understanding of the direction, which therefore guides their decisions, processes and projects and offers them the courage (guts) to make the required decisions at crunch time that will follow the strategic intent.

TTFN!

The State of Support

2005-08-03T22:24:00.000+10:00

An exploratory review of the state of after hours and pager support in Australia

______________________________________

Disclaimer

This document is not meant to be relied upon as a “be all” of the state of Technical Staff AH/Pager Support in Australia. The study undertaken was an exploratory venture with only 93 respondents sourced from a mailing sent out across the System Administrators Guild of Australia’s (SAGE-AU) distribution list.

Interest has already been garnered for an expanded study to be conducted and aimed at the Australian IT staff at large.

If you are interested in becoming involved with such a study, please contact me or join SAGE-AU to express your interest.

______________________________________

Technical Support Hours

In recent years, IT departments and companies have extended their technical support coverage by several hours a day, most to a full 24*7 coverage (seven days a week, 24 hours a day) model. These extended hours reflect the fact that many businesses need to provide services to a global always-on market … which by definition implies the provision of support outside of regular office hours.

So far, this ever increasing extension of support hours and duties has been a seemingly haphazard process. If you were to go and seek any level of reliable data on “standard” after-hours support structures, the use of basic technology for offsite coverage, or other related material, you’d find pretty much close to naught.

Compensation information is practically impossible to find. A definitive source of industry standards for the way companies handle or pay for these services simply does not exist. Mercer, AIM and CSI may record salary and super figures - but everything else is considered too much of a variable.
So decisions about extended coverage are too often made on the basis of gut feelings and skimpy anecdotal data or, seemingly, in most cases, whatever the employer feels they can get away with.

To help answer some of the basic tenements about extended coverage, to gather some data and create the beginnings of some form of standardised grid that can be utilised by technical staff to argue figures with management and remuneration officers, an e-mail survey of support coverage and related business practices was released via the mailing lists of the System Administrators Guild of Australia.

A total of fifteen questions were presented to members of the guild. These questions were focussed on the structure, form, practices and of course compensation. The survey received 93 usable responses and I have summarised the results in this report.

1. Are out of hours support handled directly by you/your staff or via an intermediary (e.g. round-the-clock team such as Help Desk/Operations, Automated systems, etc)?

By far, the majority of respondents (54%) handled all support calls directly with automated alert systems (29%) and escalated call systems (17%) trailing behind.

2. How are your after hours duties metered? Do you have a roster, are you always on or is it by arrangement?

One of the significant differentiators among respondents was the format that after hours support was metered or expected by the host company. The vast majority (64%) were on a rostered system requiring a week of support at a time. Shockingly, sixteen percent of respondents were expected to be “always on”. Fourteen percent of those surveyed were rostered by prior arrangement, with only 6% rostered on a monthly schedule.

3. When on support, what are the hours of coverage required?

A shockingly high amount of survey respondents (57%) stated that when on support, they were expected to be contactable 24*7. This was closely followed by 34% requiring out-of-business hours (generally defined as 5pm – 9am weekdays and 6pm Friday – 9am Monday. Only nine percent of those surveyed were expected to be on eight-hour “follow the sun” based support hours.

4. How are escalations delivered? e.g. Pager, Phone Call, SMS?

It seems that respondents are reasonably split with pagers and SMS systems making up 46% of initial support calls, while mobile or direct to home number phone calls making up 54% of all initial support calls.

5. What is the average number of calls received per week while on support?

6. What conditions (if any) are imposed on staff while on support?

Remain Sober & Reachable	100%

Fixed SLA Timings <> 10m	30%
Fixed SLA Timings <> 30m	27%
Fixed SLA Timings <> 60m	22%
Fixed SLA Timings > 60m	13%
Return on-site	8%

7. Are you provided with tools to provide support? e.g. laptop, mobile, VPN access, Internet connection, broadband, cab charge vouchers, etc.?

Laptop	52
In-house Modem Bank	24
VPN Access	44
Internet Connection – Broadband	28
Internet Connection – Dial-Up	12
Mobile Phone	32
Re-Imbursed Services (e.g. Cab Charge Vouchers, home phone, own equipment, etc)	28
Other Tools and Services (e.g. PDA, Pager, Proprietary Tools)	16
No tools or Services	2

** Some respondents indicated receiving more than one item and this is reflected in the scoring

8. If you are unreachable, what is the escalation path?

Escalated to Other Team Member	34%
Escalated to Senior Team Member	18%
Escalated to Supervisor/Manager	41%
Escalated to Vendor Support or External Help Desk	9%
Escalated to Other Support Centre (e.g. Interstate/International Data Centre, Outsourcer, etc)	11%
No escalation Path – “Work it or wait till the morning”	3%

** Some respondents indicated receiving more than one form of escalation method and this is reflected in the scoring

9a. Do you cover support for areas not within your realm of expertise?

YES	39%
NO	61%

If yes, how are these issues handled? e.g. against a blue book, escalated to other team member, escalated to vendor/outsourcer?

Escalated to Other Team Member – Rostered On Support	31%
Escalated to Other Team Member – Not Rostered On Support	11%
“Blue Book” (i.e. Documented issues and resolutions for standard calls)	17%
Escalated to Vendor Support or External Help Desk	8%
Escalated to Other Support Centre (e.g. Interstate/International Data Centre, Outsourcer, etc)	12%
No escalation Path – “Work it or wait till the morning”	21%

9b. How is support utilisation is tracked? e.g. Is there a trouble ticket system? Once the call has been escalated, is it logged and do you have to close the call at the completion of the engagement? Or do you simply scribble the information down somewhere and tell your manager, fill in a word doc/excel sheet in the morning?

Ticket Tracking System	22%
Service Monitor System (e.g. Products like Nagios, Outsourcer Provided Monitoring, etc)	8%
Standard Help Desk Tracking System (e.g. Service Desk, Openview, etc)	26%
Manual Process (e.g. Standardised Form, Word or Excel Document, hand scribbled notes, report to manager in the morning, etc)	21%
Time Sheet System	15%
No Tracking Performed	9%

10. Is support compensated, or is it considered "part of the job"?

Compensated - Cash	79%
Compensated – Non Cash	15%
Not Compensated	6%

10a. If compensation is offered what method is utilised? (e.g. Hourly rates, shift premiums, standby rates, flexible hours or Time in Lieu, gifts ...)

Retainer/Standby Rates/Loading	41%
Hourly Rates	38%
Minimum Call-Out Rate	4%
Premium/Penalty Rates/Salary Loading	12%
Flexible Hours/Time in Lieu	28%
Flat Rate Allowance	6%

** Some respondents indicated receiving more than one form of compensation method and this is reflected in the scoring

10b. What rates are provided as part of this scheme?

Unfortunately, the range of answers were to diverse to compile into any form of usable table or graph. So, for the sake of indication only, I have compiled a close enough is good enough averages table for a basic reference.

Retainer/Standby Rates/Loading	$A 50 - 200
Hourly Rates	$A 1 to 30
Minimum Call-Out Rate	$A 25 - 95
Premium/Penalty Rates/Salary Loading	10 – 20%
Flat Rate Allowance	$A 200 – 500/ week

10c. If remote access is required and tools are not provided, are costs (e.g. mobile calls, Internet account charges, etc) reimbursed?

N/A	9%
YES	57%
NO	34%

10d. If remote support is not an option or commuting back on-site is required, are costs (e.g. taxi fares, car allowance, parking, etc) reimbursed or covered?

N/A	26%
YES	42%
NO	32%

TTFN!

Cultivating Innovation

2005-08-01T07:49:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

It seems to me that (as a generality) business units and IT shops in particular have been focused on three things over the last few years:

Cutting Costs
Reducing Costs
Minimising Costs

An unfortunate casualty of this form of two-dimensional thinking is that the most important aspects of your unit (the people) are going to suffer.

Now, I'm not talking about layoffs. I'm talking about motivation and morale.

Too often, managers forget the mindset of the IT worker. Generically speaking, IT professionals are problem-solvers, so beating a challenge is fun. New technology breeds new processes, methods and measurements that allows them to be more creative. and to adapt and improve.

I've found that when business units go on a cost-cutting-spree, they tend to remove items seen as superfluous to the business needs. Items such as training and development labs are usually the first to go. Yet, these are essential to keep the minds of your technical staff keen and motivated.

Many studies will show that staff retention is higher (even in roles with lower than market rates) where employee training and career development is focused upon in the organisation.

Funnily enough, these also help to breed an environment of innovation. So. assuming you've kept an environment where these aspects are important, and thus morale is kept at a reasonable level (i.e. there isn't a distinct feeling of the rats leaving the ship) then you are in a position to put in a system that can milk the untapped innovation in your team that can be turned into distinct business and strategic advantages?

How? By utilising some basic technology.

First, implement a WIKI based ideas platform and open it up to your employees. Allow them to throw open entries for ideas, development concepts, system changes and projects that they think are a good idea.

As a wiki, other employees can add and enhance the concepts presented, perhaps expanding or narrowing the scope, offering technical knowledge, providing key arguments for and against the entry, etc.

After a while, it will become obvious which projects have caught the attention of your staff and which will have business cases being built around them. So, now it's time to promote these "mature ideas" into phase two.

Set up an ideas share market.

A what now? Set up a system, similar in functionality to a stock market, where every employee is given a set value of points or "dollars" to invest in ideas they believe will give them their return. The completed ideas from the previous system are entered into the "market" and "trading" is opened to the members.

Depending on the value of points given to each staff member and the weighting given to the points from different departments, you can develop an overall view of the confidence level of the department in it's worth and success, even be able to see where the support is coming from and (more importantly)why.

It would be a great tool to allow not only the innovative juices of your department to develop and flow freely, but assist in choosing those projects that can be justified to business, as well as which to consider culling come those cost-saving bouts.

TTFN!

Sunday Night Mentee Corner: Career Quadrant

2005-07-31T23:59:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

I'm going to start dedicating my Sunday night posts to the topics that are always creeping up in my mentee sessions.

The first of these is the basics of looking for work.

Now, contrary to first impressions, the first port of call (besides deciding to actually look for work) is not the job boards.

The first port of call is working out what you want, and how to decide if the role you're applying for matches that requirement. So, in that light, today I'm going to share with you an exercise that was shown to me by a nerd-herder friend of mine known as a Career Quadrant.

__________________________________________

The concept of a career quadrant is simple. A page is divided into four quadrants, each exploring a different aspect of your work and career balance. At the end of this exercise, you will have an extensive checklist to assist you in your decision making process.

Quadrant 1 : Job Satisfaction

This is the box in which you're work life and duties are examined in some detail.

First, create two columns. Title the first "likes" and (unsurprisingly) the second "Dislikes".

In the "Likes" column, start writing down all the duties, aspects, relationships, cultural, environmental, etc aspects of your current and previous roles that you enjoyed. Funnily enough, do the opposite in the second column.

e.g.

LIKES	DISLIKES
Autonomous Part of a Large Team Friendly and social environment Project Work Troubleshooting ...	Micro-Managed Placed in isolated area Constant Fire-Fighting Pre-Sales Repetitive tasks ...

This will form the basis of a checklist for you to utilise in evaluating roles, both before you apply and after the first interview. Going through the job ad, job description or your notes from the interview, evaluate them against your two columns and tick of each of the respective items as you come across them.

At the end of your analysis, you should have an idea of the balance of the aspects that you like and dislike that can be translated into an idea of the job satisfaction you'd feel in this role.

Quadrant 2 : Career Development

An important aspect that somehow alludes peoples minds when looking for work is - where am I going, and how will this role help me get there?

Amazingly, a rather high majority of people don't have a five-year plan, nor any idea of where they want to take their career. Some people are just happy to do a job and go with the flow. I doubt that's you, otherwise why are you reading this?

So, this is the box in which you're career direction and development desires are examined.

This can be done in a number of ways, personally, I like to split the box up into three rows.

In the first row, I write out where I believe I am in my career and what opportunities this affords me.

In the second row, I draw out a timeline for the next five years pointing to my end goal, with milestones I'd like to reach in between now and then.

In the third row, I write out all the skills and technologies I'm interested in developing and experiences I'd like to accumulate to assist me in reaching my goals.

This process should help you solidify your career direction, or the very least highlight the development that you are seeking.

Quadrant 3 : Work/Life Balance

Especially in this day and age of "always on connectivity", it's important to work out your line in the sand when it comes to how much time you're willing to give to your job and host company.

Again, I prefer to split this box into three rows - ideal, realistic, crossed the line. The ideal scenario is what you'd consider to be the absolute perfect setup (while still taking reality into consideration). The realistic scenario is what you can cope with on an extended basis. Finally the "crossed the line" scenario is what aspects you will not put up with, end of story.

Take into account everything - standard hours, overtime requirements, working from home, pager support, change windows, shift requirements, annual leave restrictions, observance of Public or Religious holidays ... everything.

Quadrant 4 : Return

Finally, but far from least in everyone's mind, return.

However, this should not be focused on the almighty greenback alone. You need to consider other aspects as well. However, let's start with the subject that is foremost in everyone's mind. The cash.

First, split the box into two columns and three rows. In the first column, we're going to focus on pay.

So, in row one, write down what your ideal package (again be realistic about the market and your skills) would be - include base, superannuation, benefits, etc.

In the second row, repeat the scenario, but be more realistic about what you want, what things can you live without for the right job?

The final row should be your absolute minimum. This is your line in the sand. Any jobs below this threshold will be ignored - even if they are absolutely perfect.

In the second column, we're going to match up non-pay returns on the investment of your time and skills to this new role. So, repeat the rows, but focus on aspects such as training, development, free parking, paid meals, events, social clubs, whatever else it is that you consider a non pay return.

Putting it all together

Now that you have your four aspects you can begin to evaluate your roles, where they fit into your path and how you are going to reply to them. This is also handy to re-evaluate any job offers against as well.

So, for example, let's say you've decided you're currently a Junior System Administrator (earning say $A 40K) and that you're looking to achieve Senior System Administrator (Team Leader) role within 5 years. You've worked out the training and development you require to achieve the skills and experience you need, you've got your job satisfaction checklist and you've worked out that you're willing to work up to 60hrs per week as long as your weekends are free. Ideally you'd like to reach $A 50K base with superannuation, free parking, and two weeks of guaranteed training per year.

A role comes up that will leapfrog your career directly into a System Administrator role with some team leading requirements. They offer four weeks training per year and a guaranteed pay rise per certification achieved. However, there is a bi-weekly rotating morning and afternoon shift and you'd be expected to be on 24*7 Pager support every four weeks.

With this role, you can assess it's offerings against your checklist, then make the decision that you can live with the work/life balance changes that it will introduce for the additional training and pay rises, but the loss of weekends is an issue that you can only deal with for $A 57K.

Since you now have all the facts at your disposal, you can go in confident and make your case or reject the role based on the fact that they only pay $A 45K.

Hope this helps, leave me comments if you need further clarification.

TTFN!

Google v Microsoft : Fight! Fight! Fight!

2005-07-30T23:12:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

So, the ever increasing press release battle between Microsoft and Google is taking on the appearance of an intense personal schoolyard recess-break fight.

Firing off the first round, Dr Lee says that he approached Google regarding possible employment in May of 2005 which led to an offer of employment and that at no time did Google actively poach him nor encouraged him to violate any agreements with Microsoft.

A declaration made by Lee was among the court papers filed by Google this week, in which Dr Lee states that Bill Gates, told him they were "definitely going to sue you and Google over this" and that "We need to do this to stop Google."

Meanwhile, a Superior Court Judge granted Microsoft's request for a temporary restraining order to prevent Dr Kai-Fu Lee from violating his non-compete agreement on Thursday. Specifically, Dr Lee is prohibited from working on any search technologies, business strategies, research and development or planning related to the search market in China. Finally, Dr Lee is prohibited from encouraging any other Microsoft employees to join Google.

However, the Judge also barred Microsoft from destroying any relevant documents or data that relate to Dr Lee's employment and ordered that they post $1 million security to be used to pay for costs and damages if it is determined the restraining order was wrongfully granted.

Google immediately fired back claiming that the lawsuit is a charade, with it's real intent to scare other Microsoft employees from defecting.

This really is a typical schoolyard fight.

Microsoft is ever ready with heavy handed techniques that typically show off more brawn than brains, and Google is utilising that by taunting them with vilification jibes and jeers of they be evil.

I'm surprised that no-one has yet mentioned the hypocrisy of Microsoft's lawsuit in light of their own rampant poaching activities.

If memory serves, this case is similar to an incident in 1997. Only, back then Microsoft poached Borland's top 40 engineers, offering them up to twice their salaries to go work for Microsoft. I think it would be fair to say that they all were apparently in possession of what might be considered Borland's IP and trade secrets? Didn't they also use the same technique to poach some Oracle staff at one point? How about when they poached Cambridge University's Head of Computing Dr Needham?

It's just not old cases, over the last year, Microsoft have poached staff for every department, including their legal department!

Oh, well, the bell rings and we'll just have to wait till lunchtime bell for the next round.

Latest Courtroom News:

news.com Articles

internetnews.com article - Google Strikes Back in Executive Tug-of-War

Microsoft's Recent Poaching Activities:

The tiscali.games article - Microsoft poaches Final Fantasy maestro
The Register Article - MS poaches Symbian exec for wireless ops
AccountancyAge Article - Microsoft poaches EU antitrust case official
Win Insider Entry - Microsoft poaches IBM legal eagle

See my previous posts on this topic:

TTFN!

A plethora of EA frameworks

2005-07-29T15:16:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

One of the hardest decisions to make when undertaking an architecture project is "which framework do I use"? Do I utilise a "COTS" Framework or develop a proprietary framework based on the specifications and requirements of this implementation?

For some, governance dictates the decision, some have the decision made for them, and others simply go with what they know.

But what are the Frameworks already developed out there, and what do they offer?

Today, I'm going to briefly explore some of the Frameworks (that I'm aware of) that are (in my point of view) relevant for Australian corporations in the hope that it will (in the very least) enlighten and inform.

Zachman Enterprise Architecture Framework
Probably the best known of all the EA Frameworks. First published by John Zachman in the 1980's, it has become the definitive framework for a number of Architects and Corporations and is still highly utilised.

It aims itself as a positioning Framework, categorizing deliverables in a set of six by six cells that cover the scope, business model, system model, technology model, detailed representations against the functions of what, how, where, who, when and why.

Although the Zachman Framework applies to enterprises, the Framework itself is generic. It is a comprehensive, logical structure for the descriptive representations (i.e. models, or design artifacts) of any complex object, and it does not prescribe or describe any particular method, representation technique, or automated tool.

Personally, because of this aspect, I find it a great planning tool, and utilise it quite heavily for IT based projects. However, I question it's usefulness as full Enterprise Architecture and find that it's holistic perspective is a little limited.

The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF v8.x) Enterprise Edition
Probably my favorite of all the frameworks, TOGAF is a neutral, practical, freely available, industry standard architecture framework that provides an Enterprise Architecture Development Methodology that has been received with broad acceptance. It aims itself as a process and planning tool that provides a detailed method and set of supporting resources for developing an Enterprise Architecture Framework.

The Open Group's goal with TOGAF is to work towards making the TOGAF architecture development method an accepted industry standard method for developing an enterprise architecture and thus does not prescribe any specific set of enterprise architecture deliverables. Although it is sufficient for an organization to use "as-is", it can be adapted as an EA development method for use with other deliverables-focused frameworks, such as Zachman, E2A, etc.

Integrated Architecture Framework
A proprietary Framework that has been developed by CapGemini Ernst & Young. IAF breaks down the overall problem into a number of the related aspect areas covering Business (people and process), Information (including knowledge), Information Systems, and Technology Infrastructure. There's also two specialist areas addressing the Governance and Security aspects across all of these areas. Analysis of each of these areas is structured into four levels of abstraction: Contextual (why), Conceptual (what), Logical (how) and Physical (with what).

The framework is generally characterised in the EA circles as a system that has a solid history in Enterprise Planning that effectively separates concerns, provides an holistic perspective and is a strong communication tool but due to it's proprietary nature has limited acceptance.

Extended Enterprise Architecture Framework (E2A / IFEAD)
IFEAD is a not for profit research and information exchange organization working on the future state of Enterprise Architecture. The Extended Enterprise Architecture is dealing with the processes and activities of extending the Enterprise Architecture beyond its original boundaries, defining a collaborative environment for all entities involved in a collaborative process.

Similar to the Zachman model, it contains six columns dealing with why (context), with who (environment), what (conceptual), how (logic), with what (physical) and when (transformation). The rows are similar to the IAF columns with focus on related aspect areas covering Business (people and process), Information (including knowledge), Information Systems, and Technology Infrastructure.

Unlike the Zachman and IAF models, the framework grid is surrounded by four viewpoint boxes dealing with Privacy, Governance, Security and Other Sets of viewpoints.

The framework is focused on remaining a neutral/open framework and positioned with a focus on collaboration, separating concerns, providing a holistic perspective and use as a communication tool.

Computer Integrated Manufacturing Open Systems Architecture (CIMOSA)
An European Strategic Program on Research in Information Technology of the European Union (ESPRIT) supported development which provides a framework based on the system life cycle concept together with a modelling language and definitions of a methodology and supporting technology.

This European approach to enterprise modeling and integration focusing primarily on processes, commonality of models and language. While there seems to be a heavy focus on views, models and frameworks, there is a heavy base in manufacturing history and uptake seems to be limited.

Enterprise Architecture Planning (EAP)
This commercial methodology is a specific attempt to provide guidance for specifying the top two rows of the Zachman Framework: Scope (Planner) and Business Model (Owner). Published in 1992, the methodology has a business data-driven approach intended to ensure quality information systems by emphasizing the definition of a stable business model, data dependencies defined before system implementation, and the order of implementation activities based on the data dependencies.

EAP defines a process for enterprise architects that emphasizes interpersonal skills and techniques for organizing and directing enterprise architecture projects, obtaining management commitment, presenting the plan to management, and leading the organization through the transition from planning to implementation.

EAP covers only the first two rows of the Zachman Framework. This means that only the business planning is detailed, and no attention is given to technical design or implementation. EAP has been mainly used in business and industrial information systems.

___________________________________

Well, that's all for today. I will probably delve into some more as soon as I get a chance to explore them further, and quite possibly may even delve deeply into each if time and mind permits.

Now, I'm sure that some will disagree with some of my views, will tell me of a great EAF that I've missed, or how crap a certain framework I've mentioned is. Well, that's great! That's what the comments board is for, so jump on in!

TTFN!

Japanese develop 'female' android

2005-07-28T16:47:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

Wow! No longer do we have to wait for Dr. Noonien Soong to get around to it in 2328, it may actually be possible to see our own working Androids in our lifetime!

The Osaka University Intelligent Robotics Laboratory has created Repliee Q1.

The BBC have an interesting news article about it or you can see a segment from the Discovery Channel TV show.

TTFN!

Cool Gadgets: Mobile Power Generator Bags

2005-07-27T20:25:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

You're at the airport and you're mobile battery is about to die, or worse, your iPod! What do you do?

Well, luckily for you, you've spent the entire day walking in that unexpected sunshine, and have fully charged the Li Ion battery inside the Voltaic Solar backpack.

The what now?
Voltaic have come up with a range of solar bags, each designed to provide the owner with a mobile power generator that is designed to charge your devices without tying you to a power outlet.

They have an integrated set of panels along the back pocket of the bags that generate up to 4 watts of power. Now that's enough to charge most portable devices (other than laptops). So, a typical cell phone will take 4-6 hours to charge in direct sunlight. (Check out their charging time approximations).

The panels are apparently built on a strong, but light weight, aluminum plastic composite, which are said to withstand the rigors of outdoor use and allows them to articulate, so the bags don't feel stiff.

So, it's all wasted if something isn't plugged in?

On the contrary, with the optional battery pack (which clips inside the back pocket of the solar bags) it allows the bag to function as a mobile power reservoir, not just a solar charger, with the battery pack containing a 2,200mAh Li Ion battery to store all that sunny goodness.

It goes without saying that they have a variety of adaptors and accessories available for your picking.

A very geeky gadget, to be sure, and although comparable in price to some of the high-end airline luggage prices, a bit hard to swallow at $US 229. I'd love to see these come down in price with popularity. Although it could be a nice gift for Sys Admin Appreciation Day.

TTFN!

MIT Research: Mining Reality, $100 Laptops & Executive Squirrels

2005-07-26T23:42:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

You've gotta love those guys (and gals!) from MIT.

Somehow, ever since the days of the old DEC PDP hackers, they have managed to show up into the spotlight of the computing industry each and every year. Not without merit, mind you.

Even if you didn't know they were from MIT, you would have heard of past achievements, like Electronic Ink or Real-time holographic video images with commodity PC hardware.

There are literally hundreds of research projects taking place in those labs, but three that grabbed my interest recently were the $100 laptop, the Cellular Squirrel and Reality Mining.

$100 Laptop
Developed as a way to educate the world's children, the concept of the sub-100-dollar notebook is definitely interesting. A rugged, Linux-based, full-color-screen laptop, which will use innovative power (apparently including wind-up), be WiFi- and cell phone-enabled, and have USB ports galore.

Its current specifications are: 500MHz, 1GB, 1 Mega pixel.

So how are they getting it so cheap? In their own words:

First, by driving the display cost below $25. We are exploring five different options for this, looking at possibilities such as projected image or roll-to-roll printed display. Projection is the primary candidate at this time, and will bring the cost of an approximately 12" diagonal display to below $20. Electronic ink, invented at the Media Lab, is another option.
Second, we will get the fat out of the systems. Today's laptops have become obese. Two-thirds of their software is used to manage the other third, which mostly does the same functions nine different ways.
Third, we will market the laptops in very large numbers (millions), directly to ministries of education, which can distribute them like textbooks.

This is one to keep an eye on - especially once they go into full production swing. I'd be interested to see the effect it will create in the general market, if any.

The Executive Squirrel
Are you the type that is overwhelmed with phone calls and can’t afford a secretary? Then Stefan Marti from the Media Lab has just the thing for you!

The Cellular Squirrel is a Bluetooth enabled animatronic rodent that can manage your calls for you. How? By using a combination of technologies.

One of these is called the Issue Detection System. This system will be able to assess in real-time the relevance of a call to the user. If it is deemed worthy of disturbing you, the smart robotics in this little plush toy will get your attention by waving and facing you. If you trust it's judgement, press it's hand and it becomes a speakerphone. If you don't, pressing it's foot will divert the call to Voice-mail.

I think we can see these on a number of desks in the not-so-distant future.

Check out these press articles or Stefan's Home Page for further information.

Reality Mining
What do you get when you log 350,000 hours of data over nine months about the location, proximity, activity and communication of volunteers through cell phones carried by them?

A data mining algorithm that is able to predict what people would do next 85% accuracy level!

MIT Researcher, Nathan Eagle, used cell phones in a recent project at MIT Media Labs to both document and predict the lives of 100 MIT faculty and staff members during the Reality Mining Project.

The project has a phenomenal potential, in quite a number of areas, and it will be interesting to see the impact on (the most likely immediate) cell phone technology and later in the data mining fields.

Check out this Wired News Article, the Reality Mining Project Page or Nathan's home page for more information.

TTFN!

Google on Microsoft's Hit-list

2005-07-25T19:40:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

I reported in an earlier post that Microsoft (well, Bill Gates at least) considers Google competition and is more like them "than anyone else we have ever competed with".

Well, over the past couple of weeks, it seems that competition is firing up with pot shots being taken by both sides.

It started with Google announcing (Tue 19 July, 2005) that they plan to open a research and development center in China. In the same release, they also announce that they have hired Dr. Kai-Fu Lee as Vice President, Engineering and President of Google China. Apparently, Dr Lee previously held the position of Corporate Vice President, after founding Microsoft Research China in the late 1990s.

On Wednesday (20 July, 2005), Microsoft announced it was filing a lawsuit against both Dr. Lee and Google, claiming Dr Lee breached employee confidentiality and non-compete agreements and that Google intentionally assisted Dr. Lee.

Come Thursday (21 July, 2005), Google had counter-sued Microsoft claiming that the non-compete clause violates California laws giving workers the right to change jobs and that Microsoft's restriction is clearly an illegal restraint of trade. Google says they are trying to create an environment for innovators and that Microsoft is focused on litigation and intimidation.

It's an interesting development after the last year, in which one of Microsoft's key Windows architects had defected to Google in March, Google announcing that they will open an office in Kirkland, Washington (practically next door to Microsoft's Seattle HQ), and a consistent set of rumours from MS looking to take-over Google, the development of a Google Browser and even a GoogleOS.

It's going to be interesting times ahead ...

TTFN!

Cool Gadgets: Two-way viewing-angle LCD

2005-07-24T21:26:00.000+10:00

You're sitting at home in the lounge on Sunday night, and want to check if that e-mail you were promised by your mate on IM has finally made its way into your Gmail account, but your partner wants to watch the Sunday Night movie.

What do you do?

Well, never fear, Sharp has come to the rescue!

Introducing what they claim to be the first LCD to simultaneously display different information in right and left viewing directions. This is the one invention that will save your relationship when the footy's on at the same time as Sleepless in Seattle.

It also offers promise in other areas, like in cars so the driver sees their in-car navigation maps while their passenger watches a DVD movie from the same screen.

Not interested in seeing two images? No problem, flick of a switch and it becomes a very wide angle LCD screen.

Now, how do you play the audio of two shows to each viewer?

TTFN!

Women in IT

2005-07-23T13:37:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

In my web travels today, I discovered a rather perturbing fact. It seems that there is a growing trend where women leaving tech jobs in droves. I was originally alerted to the fact by this blog article that talks about the one women's decision to leave IT.

At first I left a comment on her site ... but the more I thought about it, the louder that internal ranter's voice of dissension became in me. So, I thought to myself, what are you going to do about it?

Well, to be honest ... I don't know ... I mean I could go on one of my (in)famous tirades ... but that's not going to make anything better.

Instead, for now, I'm going to list out sites that may be useful to the fairer sex (no disrespect intended) to find support, networking opportunities, mentoring and general assistance from like minded and successful women.

Australian

Canadian

Wired Woman

US Centric

The Center for Women and Information Technology

WorldWide

Association for Computing Machinery committee on Women in Computing

Other sites of interest

Although I can't make any promises, I will try to line up some appointments with some of the women who have "made it" in IT. If I succeed, I'll post up their commentary on this blog. If you are a women who has made it, drop me a line!

In the meantime, if you have other links that could be useful to women in IT, or know of networking or support groups, associations, or the like, please post it in the comments for all to see.

TTFN!

MS going after RSS?

2005-07-22T22:37:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

Microsoft recently announced that the next versions of Internet Explorer (7.0) and Windows (Longhorn - or is it Vista now?) would integrate RSS (Really Simply Syndication) support.

Now, is it just me, or does anyone else get a feeling of déjà vu?

Calling RSS "the next stage of evolution" for the internet, at this late stage of the game is no different to the announcement back in the mid-90's that the internet will be "the next big thing".

As always, Microsoft have missed the boat and are trying to convince the public that they are on top of innovative evolutions.

But are they? It seems to me that the monolith seems to jump onto technologies once the technology hits some form of critical mass, just like now, RSS is big, it's being used throughout the Internet and it's not going away. So, as always, the software giant will embrace this "relatively new" technology as tight as the death grip of a pirate on his treasure map and will (assumedly, based on past ventures) subsume RSS inside its operating systems and browser technology.

On the surface, this is good news for the end users. IE will now be able to automatically discover RSS feeds; and Windows (Longhorn/Vista) and the apps running inside it, will be able to build and utilise feed lists.

As per the Integration of IE into Windows 98 and the introduction of DHTML, I'm convinced that Microsoft will create and base a new set of RSS extensions. Thus, the takeover of another technology will be complete.

So, it isn't hard to figure out what happens next in the Longhorn-IE-RSS scenario. IE 7 will launch late this year, then Longhorn/Vista will (finally) arrive in 2006(7?), new (MS embraced and extended) RSS code will be released and the package will undoubtedly sport easy-to-use, seamlessly integrated RSS capabilities.

The whole industry, including competitors, will cheer. Then they'll have this pang, a flash of déjà vu (ala IE, Windows 98 ,DHTML) and wonder what hit them.

Viva la Evolution?

TTFN!

On the nature of Documentation

2005-07-21T21:56:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

I found this the other day:

Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good;
and when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
-- Dick Brandon

So I started thinking about the nature of documentation, and the problem for most of the purely technical and geeky among us is that it does feel like we're exposed to the dreaded green kryptonite when it comes to writing it.

We all know why it's important - but in case you don't here's a few reasons:

Create an accurate record of all systems design, maintenance upkeep, upgrades and configuration changes.
Establish history. It's easier to know where you need to go, if you know where you (or your predecessors) have been.
Provide other IS&T staff with a knowledgebase of configuration data, procedures and policies.
Ensure consistency through changes and transitions - including staff and the ever present merger/acquisition organisational transitions.
It is just good sense.

As always, there will be a few of the readers nodding and saying to themselves, sure, I know, it all makes sense, but who's got the time?

I understand it, I do, I mean with all of the demands on your time, what with daily production requirements, responding to service requests, dealing with critical projects and the last-minute-sorry-we-didn't-talk-to-you-when-we-started-the-project-but-we-need-this-in-tomorrow request ... documentation is usually delegated to the end of the line.

But it really is a vicious cycle ...

If you had meaningful documentation, you wouldn't spend more time dealing with technical problems. You wouldn't repeatedly spend your time researching and collecting information that someone in the next cubicle has already collated nor would the team be implementing different flavors of the same technical solutions. It all leads to additional work. In short, it's all wasted time and effort.

So, the first hurdle, is how you find the time? It comes down to making it a habit.

Every time you start a new project, make sure you include time for documentation. Next time you get called to fix a server that's gone belly-up, take a notebook with you and write down the steps you took to correct it. New server being built? Write out a step by step as built config doco.

The process here, is to write it down. Don't worry about structure, language, even if anyone else can make heads or tails of it ... this is for you. Once you've written these initial notes, you can set aside a few hours a week where you can work on them in more detail.

So, now comes the next hurdle, you need to clearly communicate technical ideas to your audience. Some of these documents will need to be written to technical peers and others to non-technical colleagues (or customers!).

There are literally hundreds of books out there that describe writing styles, documentation projects and documentation best practices.

However, if you only have the time to be "instantly competent" rather than an expert in writing, the a book I was recently made aware of is "Spring into Technical Writing for Engineers and Scientists" by Barry J. Rosenberg. A thorough review is provided by Simon P. Chappell on slashdot.org where he writes:

Unlike most works on literary skills, this book treats you like a geek and realizes that you don't want to write prose, but you do want to communicate through a written medium.

Might be a good place to start.

TTFN!

Defining Architecture

2005-07-20T23:09:00.000+10:00

One of my mentees asked me about the concept of architecture, and what the differences between an IT, Infrastructure, Application, Data, Solutions, Business, Enterprise, etc, etc, etc Architects were.

Well, I had to admit, it stopped me in my tracks for a while as I sought out the words to try and clarify the distinctions between each discipline within the greater architectural pyramid.

So, as a means to solidify my own thoughts, and to answer their question, it is the focus of today's blog entry.

* DISCLAIMER * DISCLAIMER * DISCLAIMER *

In the majority of cases and in the majority of organisations, I would dare say that the role titles would reflect the corporate culture more than they reflect some form of ideal or job description. This is why you'll find advertised roles for IT architects that specify completely different selection criteria or demand various knowledge & experience foci. The following definitions are based on my views of the roles in question, and how I perceive their relationships to each other and the greater vision of the enterprise.
In my opinion, although it would probably be best to have a specific person in each role, the intention is to describe the role that should be done. The tasks should be done … regardless of who is actually performing it.
Furthermore, some of my ideas may still be immature in their descriptors. I look forward to any input from the readers to assist me in clarifying some of these fields.

* DISCLAIMER * DISCLAIMER * DISCLAIMER *

A note on the colours used for headings:

Foundation Architects: Responsible for the architectural design and documentation at a reference model (i.e. Big Picture) level
Business Focus: These roles focus on the business functions required.
ICT Focus: These roles focus on the technology functions required.
Mixed Focus: These roles focus on a specific solution for either business or ICT.

Enterprise Architecture
Although as a concept, Enterprise Architecture is at least 20 years old, the reality is that it has been slowly evolving during all of that time. For that reason, you will see a number of definitions of what an Enterprise Architect is and what they are responsible for.

In my mind, the concept of an Enterprise Architecture refers to the architecture of an Enterprise. Well, Of course! To be more specific, it refers to how all parts of an enterprise do (and should) work together to provide the capability of said enterprise to achieve its vision.

I do like the description that is located on the GEAO website, which states that:

Enterprise Architecture refers to the way in which an enterprise vision is expressed in the structure and dynamics of an Enterprise. It provides, on various architecture abstraction levels, a coherent set of models, principles, guidelines, and policies, used for the translation, alignment, and evolution of the systems that exist within the scope and context of an Enterprise.

It should be noted that systems is not purely a computer or ICT system - it can (and does) refer to any range of systems including (but not limited to) the organisation, management systems, business processes, methodologies, standards, compliance regulations, etc. In short, it refers to the whole ball of wax that makes up the enterprise. So, by definition then, it means that all next level architectures (business, IT, communications, etc) are all part of this larger system.

This means that Enterprise Architecture covers a very broad area of interest and runs through (and is involved in) all disciplines within the enterprise.

So, to summarise, from my perspective, the EA is more of a city planner than a building architect. Their job is to co-ordinate the planned community (not an unhindered sprawl). That's all. They are not meant to design or co-ordinate a well-designed building, motorways, recreation zones, etc. Those are the responsibility of each of the other Architects in the team.

Clear as Mud? Fantastic! Let's move on ...

The Business Architect

Just like the EA, the Business Architect is a Foundation Architect who has the responsibility for architectural design and documentation at a reference model level. They often lead a group of Architects related to the business program. The focus is on enterprise level business functions required.

So what are these? Information, Process, industry and organisational specifics, legal, etc …

The focus is on the Business Case, the Business Scenario, the alignment of the Business Vision, Mission Statement and future direction of the organisation and its individual units.

I see this person as a combination of Management Consultant, Business Analyst, Business Process Engineer, Operations Officer and CEO. In some cases, this entire role may actually be replaced with a board of those same individuals.

Information Architect

Information Architecture is the art and science of structuring, well, Information. IA is generally viewed as an umbrella phrase and is generally appropriated by IT workers in the UI field.

However, the term information architecture describes a specialized skill set which relates to the management of information and employment of information related tools. It is associated with library sciences due to the nature of information relationships and management of information content and you'll find that many library schools teach information architecture as a part of their curriculum.

So how does this relate to the Business side of the Architecture?

Well, from my perspective, the flow of information is one of the major lifeblood sources of any enterprise. This architect will be responsible for the architecture of the flow of information – within the enterprise, to the enterprise, from the enterprise.

It's perceivable that this role would interface quite heavily with the Data Architect.

Process Architect

The Process Architect is responsible for analysing the enterprise and either optimising their business processes or architecting new ones organizational needs.

Unlike a Process Engineer, the architect looks at the inter-relationship of processes, the cross-departmental links, industry best practices, etc. Unsurprisingly, they take a big-picture approach.

The role is re-iterative, with the Architect responsible for monitoring the execution of the business processes, providing management with the means to analyse their performance and make additions, subtractions or changes to the process tree with the aim of improving the enterprise.

The Process Architect may also be responsible for the governance of the Enterprise Architecture plan and process execution.

Industry Architect

The Industry Architect has the responsibility for architectural design and documentation at an industry level. The focus of the Industry Architect is on industry specific problems and solutions, for example banking, mining, retail, hospitality, etc.

Organisational Architect

The Organization Architect has the responsibility for architectural design and documentation of specific organisational units. They re-use the output from all other architects. The focus of the Organisation Architect is on enterprise level business solutions in a given domain, such as finance, human resources, sales, etc.

The [IT/ICT] Architect

Like the Business Architect, the IT or ICT Architect is a Foundation Architect who has the responsibility for architectural design and documentation at a technology reference model level. They also often lead a group of Architects related to the technology program and focus on enterprise level technology required.

Data Architect

This person is responsible for designing the logical and physical data models. The Data Architect designs and creates logical data models based on the information needs supplied by the Business Architect, IA and/or Business Analysts.

Application Architect

Also known as a Software Architect, their responsibility lies in the actual specific building design. In the same way as a building architect sets the principles and goals of a building project as the basis for the draftsman's plans, so too, a software architect sets out the software architecture as a basis for actual system design specifications.

From an enterprise level, an application architect employs extensive knowledge of software theory and appropriate experience to conduct and manage the high-level design of all software products. They are also responsible for placing the guidelines for the choices made for COTS or in-house products.

The software architect develops concepts and plans for software modularity, module interaction methods, user interface dialog style, interface methods with external systems, innovative design features, and high-level business object operations, logic, and flow that would be utilised for all application and software decisions.

Infrastructure Architect

This person is responsible for designing the logical and physical infrastructure models required. In the same way as a building architect sets the principles and goals of a building project as the basis for the draftsman's plans, so too, an infrastructure architect sets out the infrastructure architecture as a basis for actual technology specifications.

The Infrastructure Architect is responsible for creation and maintenance of the infrastructure to support the complex application environment. They design and create the requirements for the choices of iron and networks, and may also be responsible for operating system software and management tools.

Systems Architect

The System Architect has the responsibility for architectural design and documentation at a system or sub-system level, such as management or security.

A system architect may shield any of the Foundation Architects (EA, Business Architect, IT Architect) from the unnecessary details of the systems, products and/or technologies.

The focus of the System Architect is on system technology solutions, for example a component of a solution such as enterprise data warehousing.

The Solutions Architect

The Solutions Architect, just like the Systems Architect, has the responsibility for architectural design and documentation at a project or sub-project level and are generally used to shield any of the Foundation Architects from the unnecessary details of a particular project.

Although generally a generalist architect (in some ways a hands-on version of a foundation architect) they may also be focussed within another discipline – such as an Infrastructure Solutions Architect.

The focus of the Solutions Architect is on the project, for example the entire solution of an enterprise data warehouse.

__________________________________

How it all hangs together:

__________________________________

I hope all of that made sense … I'm rather tired and my brain is a bit slushy, but hopefully it helps clarify a few things … I will expand on this and clean it up a little in the future … If there's something in particular you'd like to see focussed on first, please let me know!

TTFN!

One for the Sys Admin Mentees

2005-07-19T22:50:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

This is one for my mentees (past, present and future).

The ultimate resource for all things SysAdmin, especially when it comes to working out best practices of system and network administration - independent of specific platforms or technologies - is written by Tom Limoncelli and Christine Hogan in a lovely bound volume called "The Practice of System and Network Administration".

The book features six key principles of site design and support practices (simplicity, clarity, generality, automation, communication, and basics first) and examines the major areas of responsibility for system administrators within the context of these principles.

The book also discusses change management and revision control, server upgrades, maintenance windows, and service conversions. You will find experience-based advice that is invaluable!

For those who I've mentored, you'll notice some similarities with my lessons ...

As an ongoing exercise as well, I'd suggest you bookmark and regularly read their blog as well. Some of you may have already been given this link to Tom's tips for Technical Resumes. It's all worth it's weight in electrons it is ...

TTFN!

Sys Admin Appreciation Day

2005-07-19T21:39:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

Well, it's coming up to that time again, the Last Friday of July is the System Administrators Appreciation day. This year it lands on Friday, July 29.

For those that don't know, it's a special day organised to acknowledge the worthiness and appreciation of the people who help keep the systems running.

Let's face it, they get no respect 364 (365 during leap years) days a year.

This is the day that all System Administrators across the globe, will be showered with expensive sports cars and large piles of cash in appreciation of their diligent work.

Since that isn't likely to happen ... a nice token gift and some public acknowledgement would go a long way to show them that their hard work is appreciated.

It's the least you could do. Really.

Do you ever consider all the daunting tasks and long hours (weekends and public holidays too!) they must achieve to allow you to do the most simple and granted tasks? Do you know what they must achieve just so you can post that 3Mb video of the annoying phone frog being shot by a care bear to 300 hundred of your mates, without so much as a hitch from your client?

Let's be honest, sometimes you don't know your System Administrators as well as they know you.

Remember this is one day to recognize your System Administrator for their workplace contributions and to promote professional excellence.

At the very least, thank them for all the things they do for you and your business.

If you're not sure what to get them, the best place to start is the Think Geek Gifts for Sysadmins Page.

For the ultimate gift, give them the gift that lasts all year! Pay for a year's membership to a body of their peers!

For US/Canadian System Administrators: SAGE
For Australian/New Zealand System Administrators: SAGE-AU
For the Irish System Administrators: SAGE-IE
For the System Administrators who are Welsh, Irish, Scottish or English : SAGE-WISE

Further (humorous) links:

TTFN!

Linux on the Desktop - Novell's Enterprise push

2005-07-18T23:43:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

Over the last few years, we've seen and heard a great many reasons to replace that windows desktop with a Linux powered desktop.

White papers have come out, business cases made, interfaces redeveloped, office packages created ... each distributor has even created their own version of an enterprise desktop package.

However, I see it as one of those paradoxes that these same perpetrators of "the push" are (generally) not themselves running these systems. Well, until now that is.

With their purchase of Ximian and then SUSE, Novell has made an entry into the Linux and OpenSource markets with extreme gusto. So much so, in fact, that rumours are still circulating to what to expect next? Red Hat acquisition? Purchasing MySQL? How about Zope? Ah! Levanta!?

We'll leave the rumour mill alone, and wait and see ...

In my mind, the distinction that Novell has made is that they are actually willing to put their stock where their press releases are and make the enterprise move to Linux internally. Yeop. That's right. They're eating their own dog food and moving all six-odd thousand staff over to Linux desktops.

I'll just let the significance of that sink in for a while ...

Why is this a big deal? Well, let's be honest, despite the fact that Linux as a desktop operating system is maturing, it still has a few shortcomings and general user issues (Installing Applications is complicated, Directory structures can be confusing to navigate, Interfaces are confusing and inconsistent, Steep learning curves required to understand system functions) that need to be overcome. It is unremarkable then that the vast majority of corporations are sticking with the Devil they know (and understand).

However, Novell is forging ahead. Starting back in early to mid 2004, all employees were targeted for the migration from Windows to Linux. The migration has been, by all accounts, a success, with Novell reaching their goals earlier than expected. All employees are now on a Linux desktop even dual-boot to Windows has been removed in favor of utilising VMware for Windows installation and applications requirements.

The learning curve has been steep though, with even the Professional Service Engineers and consultants battling to achieve their work while utilising new desktops and office suites (OpenOffice).

However, it's all worth it, says the CIO Debra Anderson. She was quoted in the UK Computer Business Review Magazine (June, 2005) as saying:

We're willing as a company to make this migration because we're willing to learn. Although it's challenging, I think we're really enjoying pushing the migration, knowing what we're knowing and learning what we're learning. My guidance to other CIOs is to look at where there is business value. Bottom line it's about business value. This isn't about taking on Microsoft head on; it's about finding the value, which could be security, it could be cost, and it could be synergies.

So far, from my side of the fence conversing with those on the ground floor of the Novell ranks, the news is generally positive.

I, for one, applaud their courage and resolve and look forward to the analysis and review at the end of the roll-out.

TTFN!

A sunday night snapshot of the current IT market in Australia

2005-07-17T20:25:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

Over the last few months, I've been lucky enough to have the opportunity to get a broad and, at times, in-depth view of the Australian IT market and the players within it.

In my recent travels, I saw a definitive trend with all outsource and professional service organisations opening their doors and swelling numbers. Is this a sign that the slow drying up of outsource contracts that has occurred over the last few years is reversing?

Another interesting fact about this conjunction in time, is that anecdotal evidence suggests that most IT departments have seen a real increase of between fifteen and thirty percent to their budgets and FTE head counts. Perhaps this accounts for the previous observation and demand for workers. It may also account for IT salaries jumping some ten to thirty-five percent!

So, what's happening across the job boards? An interesting view of the industry, the technology and business trends is unfolding.

On the lower rungs, specialty skills in high demand were a little surprising, with a recent increase in the number of job ads across the boards for Unix skills (Solaris/Linux were quite high, but a definitive increase in AIX ads), Storage and Backup, Novell technologies (are they making a comeback in the Australian market?), Java/J2EE experience. As always, there seemed to be an increase in all forms of support-team roles, but with a greater demand and focus on the "soft skills" rather than technology experience.

Going up the ladder, there is an increased demand for Security roles with salaries in this region seemingly being called by the sellers. CRM, ERP, BI and EAI are all very big at the moment, so if you have experience in these areas you seem to be white hot. In the development space I noticed a lot of calls for 3G programming, mobile-commerce, web application servers, Service Oriented Architecture and XML based roles. There seems to be a few roles focused around BizTalk, but there is a definitive skills shortage of experianced people in this space.

Overall though, Architecture, Compliance and Service management roles dominated the market in the last few months.

Compliance is really making a fore across the industry, as acts like Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) are making their presence felt in the Australian arms of US companies. Some of the clever European, Asian and Australian companies are looking at SOX and implementing SOX compliance as a bridge to excellence. There's quite a few corporate leaders who believe that if they embrace the “spirit” of SOX (i.e. strong ethics, good governance, reliable reporting) that it can re-energize their company and reassure investors.

Perhaps, this and other compliance related work, along with a need to define procedures, methods and policies is pushing the requirement for frameworks. When you combine these factors with those for the call of centralisation, consolidation and/or rationalisation, leads very quickly for the demand for architects to help you keep it all together.

Once the Architects design it and keep the vision true, someone needs to make sure that the implementation and the running remain strong and true, thus enter the Service Delivery and management personnel.

All very neat really.

TTFN!

Whether IT matters or is at all strategic

2005-07-16T23:58:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

Well, he's at it again.

Who? Nicholas G. Carr, that's who.

Infamously known for his article IT Doesn't Matter (Harvard Business Review, Vol. 81, No. 5, May, 2003) that caused an uproar in the industry, spouting numerous response white papers, books and is quite possibly the most quoted paper (and later - book) in recent IT article history.

Mr Carr's most recent article, The Next IT Revolution (CIO Insight, May, 2005) has already inspired no less a whiplash from the magazine's readers and the IT Community at large (see below for links).

In the first article, Carr states that IT is a commodity and makes an analogy to the railway transportation industry. In his new article, an analogy is drawn between computing and electrical power generation.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think he has a lot of valid points, but his reasoning and final conclusions are a little concerning. I almost wonder if he personally doesn't get it, or whether he is simply cashing in on the widely held opinion of accounting and business type IT management?

I wonder how many of those managers would have agreed with Thomas Watson of IBM in 1943 when he claimed:
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers
or with Bill Gates in 1981 when he said those infamous words,

640K ought to be enough memory for anybody

?

So where do I sit?

Simple.

IT is a tool.

How you wield it is what turns it from a commodity item into a strategic advantage.

If you perceive IT as purely the technology. If you perceive that the value of IT is placing automation tools (desktops, applications, storage, etc) in the hands of the business, then that is all it is. Pure and simple - IT is a commodity. Why even try to pretend that you have an Information Systems department? Why pretend that as a CIO or Senior IT personnel you add value to the company? Take off your fancy 3-piece suit, don your overalls and fine-tune your cost-center department to become a well-oiled, maintenance-of-technology-components department.

However, if you dream of the ways that a wireless handheld can improve customer response times and operational efficiencies; how by virtualising the desktop you can mobilise your entire workforce and reduce costs; or perhaps the way common scanning systems can be integrated into a central purchasing system to speed up and automate your logistics across the country? Then IT is definitively strategic.

I agree with Carr that savings can be achieved by applying his "Consolidate. Standardize. Prune." concept - but remember, the goal is to provide value to your host business, as well as provide savings from the commodity technology. Never compromise on the solution for the short term gain of saving a few dollars. When a solution truly provides a strategic advantage to the business, it is easy to justify, easy to defend, and just as easy to have funds allocated.

Want to read more on this topic? There's no shortage of material, some interesting articles to begin with and explore:

TTFN!

The Enterprise Architecture Conference 2005

2005-07-15T22:03:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

Well, I've booked my flights, the conference tickets and am currently making hotel reservations for the upcoming 2005 Enterprise Architecture Conference being held by Btell at Star City from August 8-10.

As far as I'm aware, the conference is the only one (in Australia) that is dedicated exclusively to Enterprise Architecture.

For those interested in the field of Enterprise Architecture, the conference will have offer the opportunity to hear world renowned EA experts and Australian IT professionals alike speak on the subject. They'll speak on both the theoretical and practical aspects of the architecture, as well as case studies of real world implementations from both the public and private sector.

Enterprise Architecture is definitely maturing. This conference helps to forge the transformation of Enterprise Architecture from a pure technology focus to one of overall integration inclusive of business processes and core information assets.

The value of this conference is different to everyone, for me, it's in this statement from the brochure itself:

The aim is to impart real insights into how each organisation has undertaken their individual projects plus deliver some leading edge theory in developing areas of architecture. You will also have a unique opportunity to mix with peers from around Australia, New Zealand and further afield.

The highlights I'm looking forward to (and funnily enough my agenda for the conference):

Day 1

The Keynote : THE ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE STRATEGIST by Jeff Scott, Principal Strategist, Logical Leap (USA)
DEMYSTIFYING ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE TO YOUR ORGANISATION by Samuel Holcman, President, Zachman Institute for Framework Advancement (USA)
ARCHITECTURE MODELLING TOOLS FOR BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION by Chris Tisseverasinghe, Enterprise Architecture Manager, Coles Myer
AN IT DRIVEN APPROACH TO PROCESS ARCHITECTURE by Jamie Cornes, Team Leader, Business Process Architecture, Strategy Architecture and Security, Information Technology, Suncorp
VISANET: ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE FOR THE WORLD’S LARGEST PAYMENT NETWORK by Michael Gonella, Vice President, Enterprise Architecture, Visa (USA)
SECURITY ARCHITECTURE Panel moderated by John Gigacz, Chief Architect, Enterprise Architects Australia

Day 2

REDUCING TECHNICAL RISK – EIGHT BUSINESS DRIVERS FOR TECHNOLOGY AND ARCHITECTURE DECISION MAKING by Mark Carroll, Architect Adviser, Microsoft
THE ROLE OF SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE WITHIN AN ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE by Chris Tham, Head of Architecture, Technology Distribution, National Australia Bank
ALIGNING EA INITIATIVES WITH BUSINESS STRATEGY by Richard Taggart, Chief Architect, General Motors (USA)
INFORMATION GOVERNANCE AND BUSINESS ALIGNMENT by Geoff Vitlin, Director, Doll Martin
PRAGMATIC APPROACHES TO TECHNOLOGY, DESIGN PRINCIPLES AND METHODOLOGIES by Associate Professor Peter Bernus, Enterprise Integration Group, School of Computing and Information Technology, Faculty of Engineering and New Technologies for EA Practitioners, Information Technology, Griffith University
ASK THE EXPERTS Panel moderated by John Gigacz, Chief Architect, Enterprise Architects Australia

Day 3

SEMINAR B : The Business Process Management Framework : Architecting & designing enterprise processes & aligning enterprise capabilities Presented by Roger Burlton, Founder, Process Renewal Group (Canada) and Author of Business Process Management: Profiting from Process

To read more on this (and other) amazing conference(s), go to the Btell conferences website, or download the PDF brochure The Enterprise Architecture Conference 2005. As an additional bonus, members of GEAO receive a 10% discount ... effectively creating a 100% ROI in the membership costs!

TTFN!

The Harrow Technology Report

2005-07-14T23:50:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

Just a really quick one today ... if you haven't already discovered it, check out the The Harrow Technology Report ... it's an ever-interesting read, and in the author's own words is about:

the convergence of computing, communications, content, telecommunications, and the physical and medical sciences boldly take us where we've never been before. It's going to be a fascinating, if more than occasionally an unnerving journey, but one which we and our businesses don't dare ignore, least we get quickly left behind!

So, do yourself a favor, check out the text archives (or even the MP3 versions) of the newsletters and enjoy reading about the brave new world.

TTFN!

Future Predictions: Grid Computing

2005-07-13T12:12:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

One of the articles I'd like to make a regular feature of on this blog are my thoughts on the future of IT technologies that, in my not-so-humble opinion, are hot and/or going to play a major role in our lives over the next three to ten years.

So, in that spirit, I'd like to present the first of these ...

______________________________

GRID COMPUTING

It's a term being bandied around a lot at the moment. Everyone is touting it as "the next big thing" and asking if "you're ready to join the grid"?

The Term

It's a known state of affairs, suppliers and other major players in the IS&T environment are constantly creating new buzzwords in the hopes of creating greater market awareness, demand and some form of competitive advantage.

Grid Computing is the newest addition to the ever growing list.

Even though in my opinion, many of the "new technologies" emerging are just another evolutionary step, the ever increasing list of buzzwords gives the impression that there's something new and exciting and altogether different from previous technologies.

You would have heard all of them as well, phrases and words such as adaptive computing, autonomic computing, on-demand computing, utility computing and N1 all discuss the same basic concept.

So, in this rant I will use the term Grid Computing to cover all of these different terms.

[siderant.1] The use of all of these terms has left the impression that the technology is complex and difficult to understand. It's also alluded to the fact that each supplier is doing something different, and thus, the whole concept is not ready to support mission critical implementations. This simply isn’t true. In my opinion, being able to apply technology to mainstream business requirements, not the technology itself, is the true sense of its value. [/siderant.1]

So What is it?

In essence, the technology enables the use of distributed computing resources (such as processing, network bandwidth and storage capacity) to create and grant it's users and applications seamless access to vast IT capabilities. The technology is basically based on an open set of standards and protocols (check out the OGSA - Open Grid Services Architecture) that enable communication across (potentially) geographically dispersed environments.

The idea is that with grid computing, you can optimise computing resources, pool them for large workloads, share them across networks and enable collaboration from anywhere across the planet.

Evolution, not revolution

The technology isn't new, per se, in fact, most of it is built on previous technologies and in some ways can be seen as the latest evolution of other developments. These technologies are all familiar to you, such as distributed computing, World Wide Web, peer-to-peer computing and virtualisation.

Here are the analogies I'd like to use to demonstrate:

Distributed Computing: Grid computing is about bringing computing resources together, not unlike distributed computing, however, unlike clusters and distributed computing, there is no requirement for physical proximity nor operating homogeneity.

World-Wide-Web: For most users, the complexity of the web is hidden, they enjoy a single, unified experience. While the Web is mainly designed to enable communication and information sharing, grid computing enables the ability of full collaboration toward common business goals.

Peer-to-Peer: Most are familiar with the p2p model that allows users to share files. Grid computing ramps that up and allows many-to-many sharing of files and other computing resources as well.

Virtualisation: Just like most virtualisation technologies, grid computing enables the abstraction of IT resources, however, grid computing enables the virtualisation of vast and disparate IT resources, not just a single system.

What does it mean in the corporate environment?

Well, most large vendors are already on board, each offering different value proposition services.

IBM has been heavily involved in the OGSA Global Grid Forum, and with its generally evangelising activities, it is fair to say, has been instrumental in bringing grid computing out of the labs and white papers and onto the mainstream IT floor.

IBM, HP and Sun expect grids will blend into the ordinary IT fabric. They believe it will follow the trajectory of other HPC technologies, such as RISC, SMP, parallel computing and CC-NUMA.

IBM Global Services, CSC and other such professional services and consulting corporations will target global, enterprise, R&D, business analytics, engineering and design grid opportunities. Meanwhile, while CPU cycle scraping doesn't have much of an enterprise grid future, the per-GFLOP and per-hour metering charge systems do and are firmly in their respective cross hairs.

Unsurprisingly, Microsoft hasn't had much to say about its grid plans. although it is a sponsor and partner of OGSA and Globus, there isn't enough of a volume push to force their hand in this space yet. Indeed, I'm wondering if we will hear too much before it completes its Web services push. However, that's not to say it's not part of their long term plans. Microsoft's plan is to have all its products running on .NET within five years. Part of this road-map is its services-oriented Business Framework, which will provide things like transaction and work-flow utilities – they sound very grid-like to me.

For Further Information

Grid Computing Info Centre
IBM's Grid Computing Page.
Sun's Grid Computing Solutions Page.
HP's HPC Grid Computing Page.
Microsoft don't have a dedicated page - see what's under the research site or read Jim Gray's (Engineer and Manager Microsoft Bay Area Research Center), August 2002 paper "What should we do about Grid Computing?"
Oracle Technology Network's Grid Technology Center.
OGSA- Open Grid Services Architecture.
Join the World Community Grid.

TTFN!

Gates v Google

2005-07-12T19:51:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

A quick one today ... I recently read a quote:

Bill Gates says of Google, "They are more like us than anyone else we have ever competed with." (see the original article dated April 25, 2005 from Fortune Magazine)

and I had to laugh! Not because it sounds absurd, not because it makes people think Bill's lost it, nor even the unsurprising stance of Microsoft to find competition out there - regardless of who they are or what they do - but the sheer, subtle gloom that is thrown onto Google by this statement. Okay, admittedly this is based on train logic, but work with me here:

When people generally think of Microsoft: Monopolistic & Evil
When people generally think of Google: little innovative guy & "do no evil"

So, when Bill turns around with the above statement, he has put together a new formula into peoples heads:

If (Microsoft = Evil) & (Google = Microsoft Like) then (Google = Evil)

Now some already agree with this evaluation, and have done so for some time.

Me? I think Google is going after a share of the pie ... yes, into other software arenas, but so far, always only with the view of providing better and more complete search facilities. I must admit, that I am a fan of best-of-breed natural selection ... so I hope they carve themselves out a nice slice. But then again, I also hope that new players, like this one, also come to the fore and give them both something to think about!

Want to follow this further, there's plenty of commentary out there.

That's all for me,

TTFN!

Three Types of IT People

2005-07-11T23:39:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

Today, I'm going to present an excerpt from one of the many articles I began to write, at some point, and either lost the direction or lost track of time, as other issues (i.e. such as job-hunting) took priority. This is a contentious topic, as everyone will want to put their $0.02 worth in ... but I guess it's my blog and I can express my opinion!

In Short, It's about the three types of IT people out there and how they affect the relationship with the business they serve ...

______________________________________

The IT industry has undertaken a number of roles throughout its juvenile life cycle. As with any new field, it has had its share of growing pains, mistakes, failures and successes. While it is unfortunate that the business community quickly dismiss successes as expected outcomes and holds an elephant’s memory for the failures and mistakes, it also holds true that, if the industry was to be objective with itself, it has not furthered the cause for itself in the business world.

In my view, the IT industry is generalised into three major generational qualifiers. Each of these “generations” has caused great benefits to the field of Information Technology and yet caused a great disservice to the field of sibling unity in the business world.

The White Coats
In the early days of ICT, the devices were large, complex and above-all extremely expensive pieces of machinery that were kept in a sterilised environment – far away from the users – and maintained by specially educated scientists.

The ever-visible white lab coat denoted and enforced the special place that was held by the device operators - a badge of distinction they wore with honour. These ‘high priests’ were the keepers of the sacred knowledge that was the new field of computing.

The ‘white-coaters’ ran the equipment like a holy relic. They nurtured and protected it, applied strong concepts of proper procedural methodology and demanded respect from the clergy that was the business users. These ‘high-priests’ took ‘requests’ from the clergy and deemed their worthiness. They told the business what they could and could not do. The focus was not the business – the focus was the device. All mere mortals were looked upon with disdain for they were not worthy, not capable and, in most likelihood, not clever enough to grasp the wonder of the technology.

A decade later with the advent of Personal Computers, this mindset was still quite common in the industry. The white lab coats were replaced with a complicated, technical, three-letter acronym rich language. Non-IT professionals were kept at bay by the simple ethos – if you cannot understand us, you are not worthy of our time. Even today, many IT workers continue to utilise the linguistic barrier and maintain the ‘high-priest’ mindset that can be heard reverberating throughout many an IT department:

“the business can’t make technology decisions – they don’t understand it”
“users shouldn’t be allowed to utilise a computer until they are certified”
“computers should be locked down, we’ll tell the business what they can do and they should be grateful we let them touch the technology at all”

This thinking naturally places and actively promotes a direct conflict between the IT department and the business. It promotes a negative feedback loop between the IT department and the rest of the business. The users are disillusioned with white-coaters; they are consistently made to feel incompetent and consistently unhelpful in the goal of improving the user’s job and thus making the business’ requirements unachievable.

Thus, this type of department is considered hostile, a hindrance to business requirements, unreliable and even untrustworthy.

The Gadgeteers
The gadgeteers are the second generation of IT professionals, born from the PC revolution. These individuals have been attracted to the IT industry because of the gadgets. They revel in the latest and greatest. Simply put, they are Technology Junkies.

This group is commonly considered the stereotypical IT professional. The primary goal of the gadgeteer is to get their hands on the latest - Software, hardware, portable, peripheral, server– anything, as long as it is the latest, the greatest and the best. These individuals can cite the latest specifications of any new IT component and argue the benefits of the most minuscule differentiators between products.

They simply love technology and its potential.

Users love the gadgeteer – they provide a wealth of information for their next home purchase, offer a wide range of “cool hardware” and are quite happy to deal with a user who shows any sign of interest in the technology.

The business relation with this department is not so rosy. Managers are always befuddled when they see an outrageous price tag for the latest technological fad. Managers tend to shrug and throw money at these departments … at first. They will begin to question why there is a requirement for 42” Plasma Screens on the desktop of every IT worker. They wonder why every year the IT budget gets bigger, but the solutions provided do not match the output.
In the end, the business views this department as untrustworthy, unreliable and most-of-all a money-sucking black hole.

The “Yes” Department
The third generation of IT professionals grew out of the corporate requirement to reign in the rogue IT department. More in line with accountants that the previous two generations, these professionals do not impose rules on the business, only purchase what is required and only implement what the business asks for. The business managers out there are most likely already salivating at this. It sounds like the ideal department – in check, in line and in control.

However, this group of IT professionals lack the pure passion of the previous two generations. They always agree with the business, never contradict it and always say yes. As appealing as this appears to the business managers among the readers, there are downsides.

The decisions for technological advancement in this group is usually made by other departments – unrealistic time-lines and budgets are put forward and the IT department simply agrees to these restrictions, accept the project and run off to complete it. Not providing the business with the correct feedback or advice can result in the implementation of the wrong technologies, the wrong solutions or simply the least cost effective result.

Many a business has set its management friendly ‘yes men’ off on a project that they anticipated to be complete in three months for $150,000 only to discover that it took a year longer and ended up costing $700,000.

Even without this extreme, this group has a hard time justifying saying “no” to the business – even when they really should. Processes are undermined, procedures overwritten and standards subverted all in the name of pleasing the business.

Unsurprisingly, this forms a negative feedback loop and the business will once again view the department as unreliable, untrustworthy and a hindrance to timely requirements – regardless of the constant aim to please.

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Well, that's all for now ... I will right more on this later ... I hope you enjoyed my "little" entry, and look forward to hearing your feedback.

TTFN!

Introduction

2005-07-10T22:59:00.000+10:00

Greetings and Salutations,

Welcome to my little corner of the world where I get to self indulgently blurb out thoughts, rants and views on anything even remotely related to the field of Information Systems and Technology.

Well, what can you expect from this blog? Not much, just opinions and views ... sometimes they'll be long winded diatribes on the nature of one topic or another, other times they'll be a two line opinion or view ...

Really, this is just a space to allow me to express my views, maybe solidify ideas, utilise the space to place some of my sermons to my mentees and keep some form of historical archive that I can go back to and say "Wow! I really thought that would take off?!?"

TTFN!